LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chiip......rrTopjT.uglit No. 

Slielf.."p^./\ X^ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



MIGHT ^ HAVE ^ BEEN 



Some Xffe motes 



BY THE 



REV. JOSEPH PARKER, D. D. 



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Frederick A* Stokes G)mpany 

PUBLISHERS 



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Copyright, J 896 
By John Char tres 



TO 

SIR WEMYSS REID 

In Appreciation of the Spirit and Genius 

which have marked 

His Brilliant Professional Career 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

EXPLANATORY.— THE dreamograph, . . . vii 

NOTE I.— THE VERY REV. A. P. STANLEY, D. D., DEAN OF 

WESTMINSTER, ..... 1 

NOTE II.— THE BISHOP OF MANCHESTER, (DR. FRASER), . 8 
NOTE III.— THE LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM, (DR. LIGHT- 

foot), ....... 15 

NOTE IV.— REV. T. BINNEY— JOHN BRIGHT— REV. HENRY 

WHITE, ...... 24 

NOTE v.— MR. JOHN B. GOUGH AT HOME, . . •SI 

NOTE VI.— INTERVIEWS IN THE VESTRY OF THE CITY 

TEMPLE, ...... 42 

NOTE VII.— PASTORAL LIFE AND SERVICE, . . .58 

NOTE VIII. — THE UNEMPLOYED — THE IRISH QUESTION, 69 
NOTE IX.— MR. GLADSTONE— HAWARDEN— CHURCH AND 

DISSENT, ...... 74 

NOTE X. — HUGHENDEN— MR. DISRAELI, . . • 79 

NOTE XI.— MR. SPURGEON AND THE CITY TEMPLE, . 84 
NOTE XII.— GEORGE ELIOT, . . . .88 

NOTE XIII.— A MEETING IN THE MANSION HOUSE, . 9I 

NOTE XIV.— HENRY WARD BEECHER : A EULOGY, . 98 

NOTE XV.— THE HOME OF HENRY WARD BEECHER, . lOI 

NOTE XVI. — HENRY WARD BEECHER : A PREACHER, . IO9 

NOTE XVII. — HENRY WARD BEECHER: HIS THEOLOGY, II5 

NOTE XVIII. — HENRY WARD BEECHER IN MANCHESTER, II9 

NOTE XIX, — LITERARY EXPERIENCES, . . . I32 

NOTE XX. — ON PSEUDONYMITY, . . • . I40 

NOTE XXI. — ADVICE TO YOUNG PREACHERS, . . I44 

NOTE XXII. — HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN, . • I47 

NOTE XXIII.— JOHN OLIVER HOBBES, . . . I5I 

NOTE XXIV. — THE CHRISTIAN PULPIT, , . . 160 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



NOTE XXV.— HENRY IRVING: A REVIEW, 

NOTE XXVI.— GLADSTONE V, SALISBURY, . 

NOTE XXVII.— THE LAND QUESTION, 

NOTE XXVIII.— A NEW LINGO, 

NOTE XXIX.— CONCERNING "BITS, 

NOTE XXX.— FAMILY RULES, 

NOTE XXXI.— "THE MAN FROM BLANKLEY'S," 

NOTE XXXII. — A SENSITIVE FAMILY, 

NOTE XXXIII. — MINISTERIAL TROUBLES, 

NOTE XXXIV.--SOME "observant" people, 

NOTE XXXV.— A SUBURBAN PASTORATE— PEDANTIC RE- 
SPECTABILITY, ..... 

NOTE XXXVI. — SPIRITUAL COMMUNICATION — LETTER TO 
MR. STEAD, . . . . 

NOTE XXXVII.— POSTAL BURDENS, 

NOTE XXXVIII.— CHURCH life and work, 

NOTE XXXIX. — ELEGANCE IN SPEAKING: A COMPLETE 
GUIDE TO, ...... 

NOTE XL.— A FRIENDLY POLICEMAN, 

NOTE XLI. — THOMAS, THE GARDENER: A DIALOGUE, 

NOTE XLIL— THE TRUE FAITH-HEALING, 

NOTE XLIII. — THE STORY OF JAMIE'S GARDEN, 

NOTE XLIV. — THE TWENTIETH CENTURY : A FORECAST, 

NOTE XLV. — THE CHURCH AND NONCONFORMITY, 

NOTE XLVI.— SUCCESS and failure, 
NOTE XLVIL— HARRIET beecher stowe, 
NOTE XLVIII— a parable of a fly, . 
FINAL NOTE.— IS life worth living.? 



PAGE. 

i6s 

178 
181 
184 
188 
194 

200 
205 
209 

216 

231 

240 

247 

259 
262 

270 
274 
279 
286 
289 
292 
298 
300 



EXPLANATORY. 

I HAVE long desired to invent something, and at 
last I have succeeded. I have invented and pat- 
ented the Dreamograph ! This book will show 
how it works. In all my efforts I have been moved 
by an overmastering wish that Providence had per- 
mitted us to take a trial-trip over our life-course 
before we had begun it in solemn and final deeds. 
At times it has seemed hard that we should start 
at once for the judgment-seat — start through an 
unknown land, traverse it once for all, without be- 
ing permitted to retrace a single mile of the urgent 
journey. There is no gate that opens upon yester- 
day ! Even if we change the figure, we do not 
alter the substantial fact. Is life a kind of writing? 
The ink is indelible. Is life an experiment ? The 
experiment is solitary and final. Is life a school ? 
The master forbids the use of indiarubber. 

Suppose Robert Burns had been allowed to take 
a trial-trip over the first five-and-twenty years, 
would he have died at thirty-seven? The whole 
scheme of life is so painfully severe ! The mistake 
is made so suddenly, yet the making of it is irrevo- 
cable. Even if you can draw a nail, you leave a 
wound in the wood. You cannot recall the faintest 
sigh. The economy within which life is set is in- 
finitely sensitive. It cannot forgive a false note in 
musicn It writhes in sight of a misblended colour. 



viii EXPLANATORY. 

It counts exaggeration a blasphemy against har- 
mony and proportion. Thus there is a clear sense 
in which all life is religious, whether we pray up- 
ward or downward. Ay, upward or downward, 
pray we must. So long as there is Need there 
must be Prayer. This is not a question to be settled 
by academic experts ; it is settled from before the 
foundation of the world. Within this religiously 
sensitive economy we must evolve and discipline 
our little life — a life-span long — a breath carried 
away by the wind ! Surely it cannot be that it is 
only once for all, a runner's brief fore-start before 
he takes the leap of destiny. We must have missed 
something in our bungling estimate ; there must be 
Mercy where there is so much Sorrow. In all the 
rush and tumult and tragedy and deathliness of 
life, I hear a plash of great soft tears, falling from 
the kind heavens. I feel — I know — I am sure be- 
yond doubt, that at the heart of things stands a 
Pity infinite and redeeming. 

I have in this book looked at life as it might have 
been, for who knows that the potential is not God*s 
way of interpreting the indicative and actual ? 
How if in us God often sees the better self of In- 
tention towering over the poor self of Execution? 
My Dreamograph brings me better views of life 
than are brought by croaking pessimists, or by the 
yellow dyspeptics who think it pious to be melan- 
choly. It was through the Dreamograph that I 
took part in the greatest meeting since fiery Pente- 
cost. It was in a private room at Addington. 



EXPLANATORY. ix 

The Archbishop had invited a number of my 
brethren to meet him. In the course of a little 
address, Dr. Tait said, ^* I should be astonished if 
there were any who really held that, provided a 
man is a Nonconformist or a Roman Catholic, he 
might on account of his separation from our own 
Church almost as well be an Atheist or a Moham- 
medan/' 

In an instant we were softened into a most 
gracious condition of heart. All the angry past 
was forgotten. A great summer sky made us glad 
with a light above the brightness of the sun. And 
the dear Archbishop's face, can we ever forget it ? 
The evening shadows were thickening upon the 
noble head ; the voice had lost its solemn reso- 
nance ; great grief-lines had ploughed their furrows 
on a brow massive and delicate in its manifold sig- 
nificance, whilst the pensive eyes seemed to have 
been looking far down the valley where the sleepers 
wake not. It was a great sight. Before that vision 
no man could be flippant. Verily we were face to 
face with a most reverend Father in God. To our 
surprise, the Primate called for bread and wine 
which he gave us as the Body and Blood of our 
common Redeemer. Then his Grace requested 
one of the Nonconformist ministers to pray. But 
who could find words ? My friend could not, 
though he got as far as, '^ Loving Father in heaven, 

we thank Thee '* and his voice gave way. And 

strong men, loud and clamant in controversy, bowed 
their heads in a deeper and tenderer reverence. 
The power of God was upon us, and the tabernacle- 



X EXPLANATORY. 

cloud overshadowed us. No man spake unto his 
neighbour, but the grip of the hand was a sacra- 
ment. 

So things Might have been What we have 
missed of festival and music and mirth of heaven ! 
We have been self-impoverished. My Dreamo- 
graph shows me a time when alienated men will be 
more drawn together, and will see one another in a 
clearer light ; then marvellous recognitions will take 
effect, and latent kinships will be realised through 
all the heat and rage of controversy. We are akin. 
In the larger heredity we are cleansed by the One 
Baptism. We shall one day belong to the holy 
sect of Brotherhood. It is in this belief that I have 
written my potential history, and it is in this spirit 
that my potential history must be read if it is to 
be understood. If I have spoken in parables, who 
will rebuke me ? If I have resorted to mockery, 
what son of Elijah will discredit the instrument? 
If I have been playful and ironical, who will insist 
that a large vein of our nature should be cast out 
as worthless? Through all my wanderings I shall 
come back to my wife's creed, which I here with 
her consent set down in her own words : 

*' Love is a joy, Its very cross 

Love is a bliss, Is a sign Divine 

Love in its pain Of love eternal 

Is happiness. Without decline : 

Love is a blossom. In spite of sin, 

A bud, a flower ; And sorrow, and curse. 

All things beautiful Love is the Soul 

Are its dower. Of the universe." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 



NOTE I. 

Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to 
save something from the wreck of their yesterdays, 
it seemed good to me also to look back upon my 
public life, and to make a note or two of its ups 
and downs. The potential mood has been a great 
help to me, eking out in quite a liberal way the 
possibilities of the austere and more responsible 
indicative, and so giving fancy a chance to humour 
a whim or two. I have no fear in coming thus be- 
fore my readers, because I know that wise men 
will at once see where and how the indicative and 
the potential play their several parts. 

Tuesday, — Stanley called on me to-day. I call 
him '' Stanley,'' treating him as a Greek verb whose 
soul you get at by nipping off the tail and nipping 
off the head and reducing it to a stem. His full 
name is the Very Rev. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, 
Dean of Westminster. But it pleases me as a de- 
pendent Independent minister to shorten him into 



2 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

*' Stanley." It seems by that sign that we break- 
fast together twice a week at his expense, I never 
call him Stanley to his face, but behind his back, 
don't I ! When I am talking to Independent min* 
isters even more dependent than I am, I deafen 
them with, '' I said to Stanley," and *' Stanley said 
to me," and ^* Stanley roared when I told him that 
story" — fancy Arthur ^^ roaring"! — and ^'Stanley 
invited me to go with him." Then they look at 
me with awe, and whisper to one another, ^* He 
knows Dean Stanley." 

To-day the little body, barely hiding one of 
the largest souls God ever made, called on me, and 
shed peace on me and my house. He was lovably 
simple. He looked up to me (I am two inches taller) 
and asked me if we sang hymns at the City Temple. 
I thought he was joking — a Dean joking! — but he 
was not, so I said ** Yes," and he seemed satisfied. 
Then he took a look round my bookshelves, and I 
showed him his own '' Memorials of Westminster 
Abbey," and he sweetly answered : " My dear 
Parker, why don't you come over ? " And I said : 
'^ Where to ? " And he smilingly replied : " To the 
Church." I said I was already there, and he looked 
aghast. **In the Church of England?" said he. 
And I answered : '' You said nothing about the 
Church of England ; you said * the Church,' and of 
the Church I am not only a minister, I am a 
bishop ! " 

Then the Dean : '* But I want you to come over 
to the Church of England." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 3 

*'But, my deariDean, I have convictions/* 

'* Certainly/' said he ; ''bring them with you, by 
all means/* 

'* But they don't agree with yours/' 

"Very good; bring them, stick to them. I ask 
you to come into a National Church, which, being 
national, includes all classes, grades, degrees, and 
qualities.'* 

'* But how could we agree? ** 

*' Show me," said he, '' what money you have in 
your pocket." 

I took out all I had and showed it to the soft, 
grey-eyed, long-nosed little man, and he said : 

'' How can that half-crown agree with that three- 
penny-piece, and that shilling have any patience 
with that sixpence ? And isn't that half-sovereign 
mixed up with the silver? However can it consent 
to be in such inferior company, eh ? '* 

I saw the point, and avoided it — the best thing to 
do with every point. 

He continued : '' The nation doesn't agree in poli- 
tics ; why should it agree in ecclesiastics ? Salisbury 
would kick Gladstone into a dustbin, and Gladstone 
would sell Salisbury for a pinch of snuff, yet they 
belong to the same nation, and assure the constitu- 
encies, when swollen with beef and beer, that the 
eternal salvation of En^and depends upon their 
avoiding one of them. The Church represents 
patriotism, not party/' 

We got along so nicely, Stanley and I. We were 
like chums. We might have been at Eton together, 



4 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

snoring in semi-detached cubicles. At the next 
ministers' meeting wouldn't they hear of it ! 
*' And," said I, mutely addressing myself, '' won't 
Belman gnash his artificial teeth when he hears that 
Stanley has been in my house ! " Bouncer (long 
deceased, and happily forgotten) was the most 
genial man when he was Ai, but when he was only 
B2 I could believe in the fall of Adam and in any- 
thing sour. 

In the afternoon two ^* brethren " called. Of 
course, I didn't mention Stanley. Didn't I ? Ask 
the ** brethren." I didn't say he had called me 
Parker. Didn't I ? I didn't describe his personality, 
eh ? Nothing about his soft, kind voice ; nothing 
about his being just above the height of Zaccheus; 
nothing about that long, eager, inquiring nose that 
could turn over the leaves of a library by way of 
recreation, eh? I never referred to these thmgs, 
did I ? Ask the '' brethren." 

Friday, 31^/. — Had a note from Stanley to-day in 
reply to a letter of mine. As he was so very 
friendly and so gloriously '' national," I asked if he 
would preach in the City Temple. Not a soul in 
the house could read the note. My Jim said he 
could read it if I would buy him a microscope, and 
get him a fortnight's holiday. My third son declared 
it was written backwards, and that it should be read 
through a looking-glass. Rebecca, my eldest girl, 
destitute of humour and deeply domestic, said if I 
inked a robin's feet and led the little creature over 




MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 5 

a sheet of paper it would pass as a note from Dean 
Stanley. Showed the note to two brethren, and 
asked them point-blank whether on the strength of 
that note I could advertise the Dean to preach in 
the City Temple. One was doubtful. The other 
said if the case was his own he would announce the 
Dean to preach on the authority of that note, and 
would give a facsimile of the same, and no living 
soul would be able to reproach me. We all agreed 
that it was a literary hand, and that it fairly repre- 
sented the mind of the writer in some of its moods. 
I showed it to my deacons, and they appointed a 
sub-committee to render the scribble into English, 
but by the end of six months every man on the 
sub was in his grave. I still think the note has a 
meaning, but it is beyond me. Never mind. I can 
say Fve had a letter from ** Stanley,'* and that will 
stun my friends and make them look up to me. 

Saturday^ \th, — Lucky day. Met Stanley in the 
Strand. The little creature was out for an airing. 
I accosted him, and brought him out of cloudland 
into the common street. Showed him the note, 
and asked him to read it to me. He smiled at my 
stupidity. Then he took the note, looked at it, held 
it upside down, and asked me what I had written to 
him about, and perhaps the subject would recall his 
memory. '' But, my dear fellow," said I, quite for- 
getting myself and treating him like one of my 
''brethren,** ''it is your own handwriting; surely 
you can read what you have written ? '* He said he 
could not. I said : " Is it a free railway pass ? '* 



6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

He said : *' It might pass for one/' ''Then," said I, 
'* will you preach for me any Thursday morning in 
the City Temple?" He hesitated. He began. 
He fell back. His eyelids quivered. Then he said : 
** When the wind is blowing east and west, and Mars 
is in conjunction with Venus, and it has been really 
ascertained whether there is a North Pole, and 
what is the precise use of such an institution, and 
whether Lactantius was right in denying the earth's 
rotundity, or Augustine was right in denying the 
Antipodes, whilst admitting the rotundity, he would 
consider my request in its various bearings." The 
answer has so confused me, that I am sure it will be 
impossible for me to preach to-morrow. 

Stanley called last night. He asked me on what 
terms the Dissenters would come over, and I told 
him. The terms are: a dead conscience, a blind 
reason, a paralysed will. He seemed puzzled. 

*' The terms cannot be changed," said I ; *^ there 
they are." 

*' But don't you feel as A. K. H. B. does ? He 
wants to come over." 

'*By all means let him do so." 

*' He says if Presbyterianism was not the law of 
Scotland, he would be an Anglican." 

" Well, so be it. I never understood that the 
difference was one of law. I thought it was an in- 
finite difference of doctrine and ritual. I was not 
aware that Presbyterianism approved of sacerdo- 
talism, baptismal regeneration, auricular confession, 
and priestly absolution." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 7 

" But he is struck with the gentlemanliness of 
Anglicanism ; he adores its refinement, its culture, 
its polish, its high breeding." 

** Good things," said I, *^ but, personally, I cannot 
afford the price." 

I do like a man to be faithful to his convictions. 
I respect an honest Pope, a sincere Archbishop, 
and a convinced Nonconformist, but I don't see 
how any man can be all three at the same time. 

Is it wrong to hate a preacher who has a bigger 
congregation than I have ? Hate is perhaps a 
strong word. I had better speak thus of him : 
** You know he was never trained for the ministry *' ; 
** He caters for the gods " ; *' He keeps all his goods 
for the shop-window " ; '' There is really nothing in 
his sermons, you know." Of course, I must pull 
him down in some way ; I owe it to myself to do 
that. If an author sells fourteen books where I 
only sell eleven, I speak of that immense and in- 
corrigible ass, the public ; not a word do I say 
against the author ; personalities are vulgar. 



NOTE 11. 

Delane, the mighty spirit of the Times, called 
on me on the soothing plea that he saw in me a 
journalistic genius. I respected him for it. I ex- 
pected it. He was very genial. 

*'But," said I, '^you must remember that I have 
had no training in journalism." 

** Nor I/* said he, " except by downright hard 
work as reporter. I wanted to be a Bob Sawyer, 
for I have an eye for joints, but somehow I got 
tumbled into journalism, and the rest came by hard 
work.'* 

'' But the Times is such a high and mighty paper. 
What can I do ? " 

** You can begin low.*' 

** I have written a few snarling paragraphs in the 
Unchristian Anvil, but that's very different from 
writing for the leading journal of Europe." 

*'Very," said he; ^^ and that leads me to say 
that, if you work in our leading columns, you will 
have to keep your Dissent out of view." 

^^Oh!" 

** Certainly. One stain of Dissent in our leading 
columns would destroy the Times'' 

** Then what could I do ? " 

" You could warn the bishops ; you could shake 
a forefinger at them ; and you could grandly coun- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 9 

sel the Dissenters to mind what they are about if 
they wish to be influential in shaping the ecclesi- 
astical destiny of this unhappy country." 

" Yes." 

*' There's a field for you," said the buoyant De- 
lane. *' Here's a note I sent to Dallas — a man who 
keeps me in continual hot water. I wrote this on 
the back of an envelope, and he follows the line 
without caring a button for the argument. Proba- 
bly he dropped an oath or two on the paper which 
received his pious observations : 

*' ' Caution Tait about Mackonochie. Tell 
him that the country cannot do with much more 
priest. Smash the idea of " ghostly father." 
Blow out all altar lights. Snub Brett's impu- 
dence, and that will please Tait. Have a fling 
at that hateful little prig, the Record' 

** That's all Dallas had to go on, and he wrote an 
article which convulsed both Houses of Convoca- 
tion. Now, my dear Parker, that's what I want 
you to do. My notion is that a Dissenter, by 
keeping in the dark, can write many things with a 
flavour in them. Think of it." 

" But the Times wants such fine writing." 
^* Pooh ! pooh ! not a bit of it. The Times hates 
fine writing ; it wants pure English, terseness, dig- 
nity, and a subtle kind of music. You would be 
surprised how few men have journalistic ability. 
Froude had not, nor Kingsley, nor Maurice ; they 
were too formal, too stiff, too long in beginning. I 



lo MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

am on the outlook for men who begin at the very 
first sentence. You can do that." 

I respected him for the remark, and I reported it 
to my wife. 

" Isn't the Times a shifty, crafty, temporising 
paper? " 

'' No ; the Times is a shrewd and honest inter- 
preter of what is going on. It represents the cur- 
rents of varying opinion. If it is one thing to-day 
and another to-morrow, it is simply because the 
age is one thing to-day and another to-morrow. 
There is an honest transition as well as an honest 
constancy." 

'' Well, what shall I write about ? " 

*'Take a turn at the Mormons, the faddists, the 
bigots, or anything along that line. Laugh at the 
vegetarians, and show them that vegetables them- 
selves are not vegetarians, but about the biggest 
carnivora going. Don't preach. Snub, warn, laugh, 
mock, and instruct, but keep your inner conscious- 
ness quiet ; we don't want it." 

I liked the great man immensely ; he seemed to 
take in everything at a glance. 

" Come down to Ascot," said he, '' and spend a 
week end with me." 

*' You forget," said I, "that the week end is the 
busiest time for preachers." 

'* Oh yes ; that is so. Still, a sniff of the pine air 
of Ascot would do even your theology no harm." 

As soon as Delane had gone, I went out for a 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. n 

walk, and whom should I meet but the vicar of this 
parish ! I inwardly drew myself up, and said : 
" How little that man knows that I may one day 
snub a bishop, and even warn the lower House of 
Convocation ! And think of me dining with the 
archdeacons and a tableful of clerics, and of them 
all smarting under the nettle-rhetoric of a Dissent- 
ing critic, and never dreaming that the nettle is at 
the table ! What a charm this gives to life ! To 
deny a Providence would be worse than absurd/' 

I have thought of a leader on Agnosticism. 
Splendid theme ! My position will be that, in 
going from the Unknowable^ the agnostics have 
gone to the Contemptible^ and I will show in a 
slashing paragraph that some so-called believers are 
little better than agnostics — Dean Stanley, for ex- 
ample, whose puny faith is always sitting in a 
draught and catching cold. FU be down on them ! 
Because little Huxley does not know there is a 
God, therefore no other person can possibly know. 
And that red-herring Colenso, sneering at the Pen- 
tateuch, and doing arithmetical sums in the creases 
of his own apron. Won't I ! For such a time as 
this have I come to the kingdom. FU ask Delane 
to call again and consider a syllabus of spicy 
topics. 

A letter just received from the Bishop of Man- 
chester has discouraged me. Here let me say that 
every letter appearing in these notes is genuine — 
that is to say, I give each letter exactly as my cor- 
respondent wrote it. Here is Bishop Eraser's : 



12 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

** Bishop's Court. 

" Manchester. 
" Rev. and dear Sir, 

'' The condition of my engagement-book 
is such all through the months of October and 
November that I am not likely to have even a 
day to spare for London. 

'' And even had it been otherwise, I should 
have felt a difficulty in complying with your 
request. I have never been able to see with 
my dear friend, the Dean of Westminster, the 
advantage in the direction of broader and more 
Catholic, but at the same time definite, religious 
thought, gained by an interchange of pulpits ; 
and the gefiius loci always exercises a powerful 
influence over me. Besides, as a bishop, I 
should, perhaps, embarrass the minds of multi- 
tudes of my own people without (so far as I 
can see) any counterbalancing gain. No, my 
dear sir ; I wish you well with all my heart in 
any enterprise to deepen the springs of Chris- 
tian life, which always issue in a larger flow of 
Christian charity ; but for myself I must be 
content to work, according to what, perhaps, 
may seem to you my dim lights, within my own 
lines. 

'* Yours most faithfully in Christ, 

''J. Manchester.** 

Well, so be it. The Bishop was a glorious man, 
true through and through, and big and healthy. 
This is his view, and it is the view of an honest 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 13 

man. I am bound to say that the bishops with 
whom I have been honoured to converse, and whom 
I have known indirectly, have always impressed me 
as sincere and high-minded men, deeply intent on 
the best interests of their Church. Nor have they 
been slow to recognise the Christian service of 
Nonconformists. It is a mistake to suppose that 
they are ignorant of Dissenting policy and action. 
What they are ignorant of is the real standpoint of 
the Dissenting mind. They have never, to my 
knowledge, done justice to the religious standpoint 
of the Dissenter. They have seen everything from 
the point of the State, and nothing from the point 
of the doctrine, '' Render unto Caesar the things 
that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are 
God's.'' The longer I live the more clearly I see 
that instead of a State Church we should have a 
Church State. 

We must beware, as I have said, lest in giving up 
the Unknowable we prostrate ourselves before the 
Contemptible. Nothing that is measurable is really 
big. A man with a barrow could wheel the Andes 
into the sea. As for the stars, give him time enough 
and a prodigal will spend them all as if they were 
sovereigns, and die in the poorhouse of empty 
space. 

I have noticed in passing through many land- 
scapes that there are forests as well as gardens. 
People forget this. There are ploughed lands, and 
lands unploughed but by the lightning. There arc 



14 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

people who have been brought up on the first four 
rules of arithmetic, and people who never learned 
letters. Why do we forget these facts, and so make 
room for envy and jealousy and all uncharitable- 
ness? The table is made out of the oak, and is 
decorated by the geranium, yet both oak and gera- 
nium grow in the Lord's estate. 



NOTE III. 

I HAVE seen Dr. Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, 
and I am the better for it. I can never forget how 
the great man received his appointment to Dur- 
ham. Laying his hand upon the head of his chap- 
lain, he said : '' Pray for me, my child." It was 
very affecting. It was no use ; I could not keep 
back the tears. It was a long time before his old 
housekeeper could get used to the new title, " My 
lord.'' It had always been Mr. Lightfoot, or Canon 
Lightfoot, or Dr. Lightfoot. But " my lord ! " No, 
she could not ; and yet she wanted to. At last she 
managed it. The Bishop was leaving his house. 
The rain came down in floods. Only one four- 
wheeler could be had. There it stood at the door. 
Cabby was covered with a kind of tarpaulin cloak 
and a sou'-wester, down which the rain ran in 
spouts. Not a living soul could be seen. It was 
as if London were dead, and the hearse was at the 
door. When the Bishop came downstairs the 
housekeeper opened the front-door, and pointing to 
the cab, she said, with some majesty, *^ Your car- 
riage, my lord ! ** It was too much for Lightfoot. 
He turned right round, ran upstairs, and literally 
screamed with laughter. By that sign I knew he 
was verily a father in God. 

But at Auckland Castle the great Bishop was 



i6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

seen to the best advantage. What a face he had ! 
Some said it was the face of an ox ; some that of 
an affectionate dog, Newfoundland or setter, when 
he wants to tell you how much he loves you. It 
was certainly a rough face, but rough like a rock 
that only gunpowder could rend, and yet with tiny 
flowers growing in its seams and fissures. No lady 
graced the Bishop's table. Yet the lady was hardly 
missed, there was so much soft, sweet womanliness 
about the rugged Bishop himself. I expected that 
the talk would be either in Syriac or in Chinese, and 
that it would turn upon the Epicurean and Stoic 
philosophies, or the forged correspondence of Paul 
and Seneca, or at least that my Dissenting vulgarity 
would be shamed down to a conflagration by over- 
whelming evidence and illustration of the extension 
of Episcopacy throughout pro-consular Asia ; and 
to my amazement the words I most distinctly 
remember are "cocoa,*' "toast," and "grilled 
chicken." It was an immense relief. Books were 
certainly spoken of. Pope Leo was described as 
" a sceptic," and another " Joseph Dunelm " was 
spoken of with reverence. Happily the Bishop did 
not examine me in the other Joseph's " Analogy.'* 
Dear Bishop Lightfoot ! There is not a Noncon- 
formist minister in England who does not hold the 
name in loving honour. 

By the way, I had a letter from another bishop 
last week. The letter is from a man called Spur- 
geon. Ever hear of him ? Letters like the follow- 
ing let us see a long way into the depths of a truly 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. \^ 

great heart. Mr. Spurgeon was full of music and 
full of love, and his charity flowed like a river. The 
son who occupies his pulpit is worthy of him, and 
richly deserving of honour. Here is the prized 
letter: 

" Mentone, 
** December $. 

" Dear Dr. Parker, 

** Your cheering note reached me when I 
was crushed with pain. As soon as I can hold 
a pen I sit down to thank you for this spontane- 
ous act of brotherly kindness. This is better 
than a hundred homiUes upon ' Church unity.' 
In the name of the orphans I thank you and 
the audience at the City Temple ; and for my 
own part I am a personal debtor to yourself. 
Why should you think thus kindly of me? 
Surely in the hour of my bitter sorrow you 
were moved to minister unto your fellow-ser- 
vant, and may the Lord do so to you and 
more also in the day when you also have to 
pine in secret. Far off from you be such days 
and nights as those with which I am abund- 
antly familiar ; but should they ever cast a 
shadow over you even for a brief season, may 
my Lord and yours raise up to you friends who 
will deal with you as you have done unto me. 
The peace of God abide with you. 

" Yours most gratefully, 

*^C. H. Spurgeon.'' 

How full of pain, yet how full of grace and hope ! 



i8 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 



Never was severer affliction borne with nobler for- 
titude. Let me lay this sprig of rosemary on his 
honoured grave. 



I am learning more and more to let things take 
care of themselves. No ; that is wrong. I am 
learning to escape the atheism of anxiety. 

I have written to Delane to the effect that I 
have already got two words which I think would 
work up well into a trenchant leader : the two pre- 
cious words are, '' nefarious '' and '^ perfidious.'* I 
am digging down to their etymology in the hope of 
finding something really good. I shall be surprised 
if I have not struck oil. I named these words to 
my wife in high glee^ and she simply curled the 
corners of her mouth, and told me to leave out 
money enough for the week's washing. I felt de- 
graded. 

Can I ever forgive myself ? I feel bad. My 
father-in-law came to see us last week in a state of 
sad depression. I never saw him so run down. 
** Come,'* said I, in my cheeriest week-day tone, 
** you want a good laugh — a good, big, hearty, side- 
shaking laugh ; so you must see Toole next Satur- 
day morning (I am only a matinee man) ; that will 
destroy the hideous blues." So we went. Behold ! 
Mr. Toole, the sweetest old heart that ever amused 
the public, was playing Caleb Plummer ! There he 
was with his old sack on, painting wooden horses, 
talking to and deceiving his lovely blind daughter, 
and for two hours we were soaked in tears. We 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 19 

dare not look at each other. We felt we were 
mutual murderers. At last I said, between two big 
slobbering sobs, '' My dear, we brought your father 
to enjoy a laugh.'* This was too much for us, so 
we wallowed in pathos and used up all our pocket 
cambric, my wife asking me in a mysterious whisper 
if I had '' another." When Mr. Toole came to see 
me after a Sunday evening service, I told him of 
this incident, and thanked him for the tears that 
had worked a great mystery of relief in a heart that 
was sad and hopeless. 



Talking of Mr. Toole, I must tell of a kindness 
he did me. My City Temple friends were just 
about to celebrate our silver wedding. Mr. Toole 
saw the announcement, and took occasion, when 
we had a cup of tea in his private room, to hand my 
wife a cheque for three guineas, to be added to the 
testimonial fund. I knew nothing of the cheque ; 
it was passed over when my back was turned for a 
moment. When I did hear of it on getting home, 
I wrote Mr. Toole a note of thanks, and told him 
that I had crossed the cheque '* payable at the 
Bank of Love,'' and gummed it into my Study 
Bible. There it will remain for ever. I often look 
at it, and think gratefully of my distinguished 
friend. 

But does Mr. Toole go to church ? Certainly. 
No more reverent man ever knelt at the holy altar. 
He has known pain that tears the heart, and loss 



20 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

that makes even gold but a mocking poverty, and 
he knows, without whine or cant, how to find the 
Invisible and Pitying Father. 



I early foresaw a difificulty in my family life, and 
I now feel all the pain of it. I refer to my eldest 
son, born, unfortunately, with only one eye, but the 
other a sharp un. I thought I saw the boy*s spe- 
cial future in that gleaming organ. It was aston- 
ishing how much the child seemed to see with the 
eye that was not open. Even his mother could 
hide nothing from him, though she has successfully 
hidden things from me for nearly half a century. 
No sooner did we get the one-eyed child, four years 
old, safely tucked and buckled into his baby-chair 
at luncheon than the dazzling eye eagerly scanned 
the frugal table, and then, in a voice which must 
have filled the whole of his inside, and have even 
then been pinched for room, he said, pointing to 
the things as he did so : *^ Fll ha* some o' lat, and 
some o* lat, and some o* lat, and nen some marma- 
lade.** He terrified both his parents, giving them 
the impression that if they refused him anything he 
would undoubtedly lose the sight of the other eye. 
He had such an eye for detail. The gardener said 
" it was'somethink awful,*' and the nurse weepingly 
assured my wife that *Mt was the terror** of her fit- 
ful sleep. The nurse said she always anxiously 
looked to see which eye was uppermost when baby 
woke — if the blind one, the day might be happy ; if 
the other one, then squalls ! When baby came 



II 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 21 

into the room, it was the eye we saw. My wonder 
was what we should make of the child. I pondered 
the question silently for years. The boy, now a 
young man, decided the inquiry by telling us that 
he had consulted a phrenologist, and had been ad- 
vised that he was clearly intended by Providence 
to be a detective ! For three days my wife and I 
could not speak to each other. She looked at me 
and broke down ; I looked at her and broke down ; 
we both looked at Davie and broke down. When I 
had calmed down a little, Davie came into my 
study, and told me that my preaching had done it 
all. He then quoted some of my recent texts: 
** Be sure your sin will find you out '' ; *^ The 
wicked fleeth when no man pursueth " ; ^^ Though 
hand join in hand the wicked shall not go unpun- 
ished *' ; and as he quoted the texts his eye seemed 
to fasten itself on whole gangs of villains. He 
would " run them down '' ; he would '* turn up their 
little game ; '* he would '^ put them in grappling 
irons *' ; he would ^* put a pinch o* salt on their 
tails '' — in short, his language was so brutal, so 
gloatingly brutal, that I never had the heart to tell 
his mother what it was. Davie was always looking 
through keyholes or listening for footsteps, and he 
once winked at me so knowingly as to make him- 
self momentarily blind. Davie actually got him- 
self appointed as an assistant detective, and then 
his pride was insufferable. He often looked as if 
he was about to arrest both his mother and me. 
The gardener little knew, when he was taking a 
pipe on the sly, or tucking a cauliflower into his 



22 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

top-coat, that Davie was watching him from the 
top branch of an apple-tree. Nor was the cook 
aware that when she gave the gardener (a single 
man, though not without encumbrance) two ounces 
of tea and a tallow-candle Davie was watching her 
through a very small hole in the larder window. 
But the fullness of the cup was not yet. Davie 
had a professional case on hand, as we inferred 
from the pained expression of his face. His eye 
was alight night and day. 

Daviess business was to run down a long-legged 
villain who had embezzled the money of a charity. 
Davie had an irrational and implacable antipathy to 
long legs. He saw fraud in both of them. At 
length he fixed his eye on a very long pair, and 
tracked the suspected villain to Exeter Hall. 
Davie sat down in front of the platform, and fixed 
his eye on the chairman. He then felt he was on 
the right scent. The chairman looked a villain. 
Falsification of accounts was written all over his face. 
Davie heard the word ** embezzlement *' in every 
tone of the chairman's voice. During the opening 
prayer the chairman craftily surveyed the audience 
through his outspread fingers, a fact which did not 
escape the piercing eye of Davie. " Now,'* said 
Davie, '' how shall I land my trout ? Shall I chal- 
lenge this thief in the hearing of a public meeting ? 
Shall I tap him on the shoulder as he leaves the 
hall?" How his course might have been deter- 
mined there is no saying, for, to the infinite con- 
sternation of the meeting, the chairman was seized 
with an apoplectic fit, and was removed by friendly 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 23 

hands to the ante-room, to which retreat he was 
followed by my one-eyed son. Davie could not be 
deceived ; he saw through the whole trick. ** Evi- 
dently/* said he, " the chairman knew that my eye 
was upon him ; I thought he did, and he fell into 
this fit to get out of my hands.*' Everybody else 
was full of sympathy ; Davie was full of suspicion. 
That is the difference between a layman and a pro- 
fessional. Whilst the people were crowding round 
the chairman a long-legged man picked Daviess 
pocket, and would have got clean off but for the 
adroitness of a City missionary from the district of 
Seven Dials, a very short-legged man, deeply 
marked with the smallpox, whom Davie, owing to 
the excitement of the moment, gave into custody, 
and allowed the long-legged man to make good his 
escape. 

Davie kept his eye — his only eye — upon the 
slowly-recovering chairman, inquiring in the mean- 
time of the officials of the meeting his precise name 
and address, which he found to be the Right Rev- 
erend Bishop Cathero, who was on his first visit to 
this country. Davie had been deceived by the long 
legs. " How long do you think a man's legs ought 
to be. President Lincoln?" '' Wal,'* said the great 
Abraham, ^' I have not considered the subject very 
much, but, speaking gin'rally, I should say a man's 
legs ought to be long enough to stretch from his 
body right away down to the ground/' 



NOTE IV. 

BiNNEY is very mad about Dickens's account of 
Hone's funeral. Binney was the officiating min- 
ister. See the full account in Forster's '' Life of 
Dickens." I had read Mr. Binney's repudiation 
of Dickens's account, and asked if I might reprint 
his article. Here is his answer : 

'' Dear Dr. Parker, 

** Do what you please with my article 
on Dickens. Of course, I wish it to be known, 
not for my own sake, but as a protest against 
the immorality of novelists in always making 
out that every Dissenting minister is a ^ Stig- 
gins ' or a * Chadband.' Forster expresses re- 
gret to me, but ^ does not know what to do.* 
Why, at any rate, he can omit the story, but 
to explain will be to injure his idol. 

*' I had a note from Dean Stanley last night, 
who had seen my paper, and remembers read- 
ing the story in Field. He expresses his fear 
that 'there is a vein of inaccuracy running 
through Dickens when he refers to facts, as 
there was an element of exaggeration in his 
fiction ' ; but the mild word ' inaccuracy ' ought 
not to mean misrepresentations amounting to 
lies. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 25 

*' My love to your wife, who, I hope, will 
read Dickens with less admiration in future. 
" Yours fraternally, 

'' T. BiNNEY. 
''January 9, 1872." 

But she does not, nor do I. Dickens saw things 
within things. The logician can never understand 
the novelist. Dickens was not writing an affidavit ; 
he was telling a story in a story-teller's way. I 
sympathise with Mr. Binney, too, for a more up- 
right and truth-loving man never lived. He was 
the very soul of honour, but even logical Mr. Bin- 
ney had his moments of rhetorical fever, as when 
he said in public : *VThe Church of England has 
damned more souls than it ever saved.*' Some 
clergymen said that was not an "• inaccuracy " ; it 
was a '' lie." But both parties may have been prej- 
udiced. 



A note from Delane. He says that " nefarious ** 
and " perfidious " would admirably suit the columns 
of the Evening Earthquake^ but he dare not accept 
them for the Times, He says he would prefer 
"nevertheless" and *' notwithstanding" as more 
flexible and less aggressive, and on the whole, more 
non-committal. " Excuse me, my boy," he said, 
quite friendly like and chummy — a rare manner 
with his majesty — '* I have seen the ups and downs 
of thirteen Administrations. From Melbourne to 
Gladstone I have seen how the ball rolls, and I ad- 
vise you to avoid ' nefarious ' and ' perfidious ' as 



26 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

quotable words. All quotable words are danger- 
ous." 

Good. If I do send the article to the Evening 
Earthquake^ Fli take care to have the money before 
I part with the gem. The Earthquake is not a 
paper to take regularly; once a month will be 
enough. You soon get tired of earthquake even 
in conversation. I always avoid a very distin- 
guished man, because he is so remarkably earth- 
quaky. Once a quarter is enough. 



I have been arranging for a conference between 
Churchmen and Dissenters on the question of Dis- 
establishment. I asked John Bright to attend. 
Here is his reply : 

" Hyde Park, 

** February 22, 1876. 

'' Dear Sir, 

" I cannot accept your invitation. I am 
compelled to avoid all public meetings, except 
such as are connected with my own special duty 
as the representative of a large constituency. 

'* I have had to send this answer to a hundred 
requests and invitations, and must send it to 
you. . I do not think Churchmen and Noncon- 
formists can publicly consider the Church ques- 
tion with much chance of advantage. We are, 
I fear, all too much prejudiced to give a fair con- 
sideration to the arguments opposed to us, or we 
think what our opponents say is no argument 
at all. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 27 

" I shall be anxious to learn the result of 
your proposed conference, and shall be glad if it 
tends to any good in relation to what, I suspect, 
is to be for many years a great subject of con- 
tention in this kingdom. 

" I thank you for the complimentary proposi- 
tion you have made to me, and am, 

" Very sincerely yours, 

''John Bright." 

Funny logic. Why, it would dissolve the House 
of Commons, and make a difference even to the 
House of Lords. 

My notion is that Churchmen and Dissenters 
should meet more and more, and not regard each 
other as curiosities. The other day I met the 
Bishop of Dover, and found him beautifully human. 
He knew I was a Dissenter, yet, though we were 
dining, he did not stick anything into me, and he 
showed no sign whatever of insecurity in my pre- 
sence. I thought him very confiding. When I told 
him that I, too, was a bishop, he asked the waiter 
to give him a glass of potass ; but he said nothing to 
me. There is an eloquent silence. 



Dined at a great house the other night, and sat 
next a woman who had the head of a horse. I was 
terrified. I believe I turned white. Certainly I 
felt white and ashy. By-and-by she talked. Then 
her face changed. She talked more, and her soul 
awoke within ner. The eyes glowed. The voice 



28 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

rounded. The horse vanished. It was George 
Eliot. I do so wish she had never married the 
second man. Far be it from me to say a word 
against the man personally, but I wish they had 
kept out of each other's way. It is dangerous work 
spending a winter together reading Dante. 



% 



The Evening Earthquake has asked for an article. 
I began it in these soothing terms : ** What is a 
Tory ? Can any one define that nefarious and per- 
fidious beast?" But my wife would not let me 
send it. She said it looked as if it was prejudiced. 
She said I had better keep it for a theological ar- 
ticle ; it was too strong for politics. I like her idea. 
I might begin thus : " What is an Agnostic ? Can 
any one define that nefarious and perfidious abor- 
tion of a pallid and chicken-hearted civilisation ? " 
Nobody could charge that with prejudice. Yet it 
would look earnest, and call upon my eloquent pen 
the attention of less ill-mannered journals than the 
Evening Earthquake, Of course, I don't really 
mean what I say in the article ; it is merely a rhe- 
torical and tumid expression of one aspect of my 
neglected conscience. It is myself at my washiest, 
but as it would not be signed, my sensitiveness 
would be spared. Conscience is a very good word. 
I think more might be made of it. Collect a bag of 
prejudices and call it conscience, and there you are. 



December 15. — A publisher called on me to-day» 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 29 

and we had some interesting talk. He has devised 
a new scheme. The new scheme is to pay authors 
something, even if it's only a trifle. This publisher 
IS a brother who writes tracts on holiness. I told 
him I would lay his scheme before Besant, but he 
threw up his arms, and exclaimed : ** For Heaven's 
sake, don't do that ! " I asked him why not ? And 
he said : " Because that villain denounces secret 
profits, and insists upon seeing the publisher's 
accounts, and would willingly see the publisher's 
family go into the workhouse." I assured him that 
Walter Besant wanted nothing but what was fair 
and straightforward. It was of no use. He left me 
a tract on " Consecration," and two leaflets on the 
''Second Coming," and said things would be better 
as soon as there was a change of Government. 



The Rev. Henry White was minister of the Savoy 
Chapel. He often attended my Thursday morning 
service, then held in Albion Chapel during the 
erection of the City Temple. I gave him a volume 
of my sermons, and to my great delight I received 
the following letter from his grateful pen : 

* Albergo Del Parco, 
" Lugano, 

" North Italy, 

''October 15. 

'' My dear Dr. Parker, 

" I fully meant to have acknowledged 
your kind, welcome and generous gift before 



30 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

you left for America, but I waited in hope of 
another Thursday morning at Albion Chapel, 
and when I went one hapless Thursday you 
were gone. ... As I am now resting here, I 
take the opportunity to send for your welcome 
on your return my most fervent thanks for your 
kind thought of me, and for giving that thought 
its most welcome and happy expression. I 
have read alone, and to others, your sermons 
with great pleasure and with equal profit. 

*^ They are most suggestive and helpful. I 
only regret that it has not seemed good to you 
to include the matchless sermon which I heard 
upon Jonah. 

'' I hope that you will do me the honour to 
fulfil your promise of a visit to me when you 
have settled down again in London. 

** Yours most sincerely, 

^^ Henry White." 

This letter is so frank and so cordial that I asked 
Mr. White to preach for me some Thursday morn- 
ing, and he wrote expressing his deep regret that 
his ^* ecclesiastical conscience " would not allow 
him to accept my invitation. Yes, conscience is a 
downright useful term. It excludes argument. 



NOTE V. 

Been five times to America. It seems like going 
to a bigger home. For genuine kindness, hospi- 
tality, and sense of kinship, America is delightful 
beyond words. If I had to live out of England, I 
should at once decide to live in the United States. 

In the summer of 1873 I P^^d a visit to Wor- 
cester, Massachusetts, for the purpose of calling 
upon Mr. Gough, who had been for one night my 
guest in England. We duly arrived at the Bay 
State Hotel, and found it difficult to secure any 
attention, because of some kind of Convention 
which had been held there that very day. At 
length we were taken up — I am afraid to say how 
high — and after ringing all the bells we could lay 
hands on, we managed to prepare ourselves for a 
short walk in the wide main street of Worcester. 
By accident we called upon a very genial corn- 
dealer, who told us where Mr. Gough lived, and 
suggested that we should look out for Mr. Gough's 
light trap next morning (as it came into the city 
every day for his letters ) , and run out to Boylston 
to see our friend. The genial corn-dealer, however, 
did not suggest how we were to get back again ; 
and in this failure he represented many kind and 
inventive geniuses who make birds with one wing 



32 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

only. We resolved, therefore, to take a vehicle 
next morning and perform the double journey at 
our own charges, as it was planned for our own en- 
joyment. A most pleasant six-mile drive, truly. 
The road was altogether English in its aspect, and 
might have been a turnpike in Kent or Surrey for 
anything we could see to the contrary. The flow- 
ering hedges, the undulating landscape, the singing 
birds, the warm, yet not sultry air, make an im- 
pression which will not soon fade. But where is 
Mr. Gough's house? Down this gentle slope, up 
that winding steep, and you see a gate before you. 
That cannot be the gate we want, because it opens 
upon what we call in England *^ a gentleman's 
grounds." No temperance lecturer can have a 
place like that. It m.ust belong to some American 
speculator, some Californian miner, some merchant 
prince. So we poor humble English people sup- 
pose ; but we are wrong, for the *cute driver says, 
" I guess this is Mr. Gough's place, sir," and away 
he rolls his wheels up the long and beautiful car- 
riage-drive. There's the house ! Not large, but 
compact, bright, summer-like wholly, as it stands as 
quietly and as independently as one of the many 
noble trees that adorn the wide-spreading and ver- 
dant grounds. It is a kind of paradise. The spirit 
of rest seems to settle upon us as a dove whilst we 
stand at the half-open door and give a rat-tat which 
even yet has some doubt in it as to the identity of 
the place. Temperance lecturers in England live 
in streets, in cottages with gardens about the size 
of five sheets of postage-stamps, just round the 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 33 

corner there, next door to the " practical shoe- 
maker/* and just opposite the " Lamb and 
Woolpack/' where '^fine old mild ale" is sold* 
Temperance lecturers in England get a guinea for 
their sublimest rhetoric, with a hint that the " So- 
ciety " can hardly afford it. But here is the head 
and crown of the whole host of temperance lecturers 
in a beautiful paradisaic residence, surrounded by 
no less than two hundred and forty acres of pro- 
ductive and ornamental land. And he deserves 
every spadeful of it. He has nobly earned it by 
hard work, and by the exercise of gifts of a pecu- 
liarly useful kind. Mr. Gough^s lecturing is down- 
right hard work. He is no dainty, self-sparing 
speaker, who chatters nonsense or utters amiable 
nothings. Every hair of his head speaks, every 
drop of blood is alive with unusual vigour, and 
every sensibility is on the stretch. The public 
insist upon hearing him, and the public insist upon 
paying him. What do you suppose they give Mr. 
Gough for a lecture ? What do you think of ten 
guineas a night? What do you think of twenty? 
Double the twenty, and you will know what his 
ordinary fee is ; multiply it by four, and you will 
know what he often gets for a single lecture. Then 
surely he must ruin the societies that engage him ? 
On the contrary, the societies make more out of 
Mr. Gough than Mr. Gough makes out of the so- 
cieties. I happened to be in his house at the same 
time with the secretary of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, Philadelphia, and the secretary 
said that they would give Mr. Gough eighty pounds 



34 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

for his lecture, and make eighty pounds by it them- 
selves. This is the due reward of genius and 
industry. It strains nobody, it helps many, and it 
encourages not a few. Depend upon it, the societies 
do not give Mr. Gough eighty pounds a night out 
of mere personal respect, but out of a fund of hard 
cash gathered at the door. In Englknd they will 
not allow a public speaker, especially a minister, to 
receive what the public would most willingly give 
him. If a minister had two thousand pounds a 
year (w^hich in many cases he could easily make) 
every shoemaker and buttermonger would '* agi- 
tate" and ^^demonstrate" and abominate. Mr. 
Gough makes monetary stipulations — so much life 
for so much reward ; and the result shows that in 
no degree is his sphere of usefulness diminished or 
embarrassed in consequence. Let the house, then, 
represent so much honourable commercial success. 
How the sun shines upon it ; how the creepers en- 
twine around it ; how the birds gather and twitter 
and sing on the sunny roof! And Mr. Gough is 
wisely doing nothing but amusing himself with 
making newspaper cuttings and occasionally play- 
ing at bowls. Fifty-six years have not made an old 
man of him. Not a bit of it ! Why should they? 
He is gray, certainly, but it is not the gray of weak- 
ness ; it is worn rather as a kind of sober livery, 
and it well befits the honest face and kind eyes. 
He tells us that he has been obliged to decline 
twelve hundred invitations to deliver lectures dur- 
ing the winter next ensuing, which plainly shows 
that his high terms are no barrier to his immense 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 35 

and growing popularity. He takes us over his 
house, his neat drawing-room, his sweet-looking 
nest of a library; then into the *' grass parlour,** 
and then into the hospitable dining-room, where 
there is an abundant and most tempting teetotal 
dinner. We recall reminiscences, tell stories, make 
promises of a kindly sort, and leave beautiful Boyl- 
ston well pleased with a visit as sunny as the radi- 
ant day on which it was made. 

Here is a letter which explains itself : 

'* Worcester, 

''October 6, 1873. 

" My dear Mr. Parker, 

" We have not forgotten the studs, but 
will send to-morrow by Adams Express a 
package to 21, West 45 Street, containing eight 
photographs of the Yosemite valley ; one of 
Mrs. Gough and myself ; an illustrated guide- 
book to the Yosemite valley ; a copy of the 
American edition of my * Personal Recol- 
lections * ; and two pairs of sleeve-buttons, one 
for yourself and one for Mrs. Parker ; and the 
studs. I am a little fearful that the studs may 
not suit you ; they are spirals instead of but- 
tons. If you wear the spirals they will be all 
right, but if you wear the button style you 
must get them altered. 

" Now, my dear friend, let us thank you 
most heartily for your kindness in taking so 
much pains to call on us when you had so 
short a time in the country, and so many 



36 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

places to visit, and such a multitude of peo- 
ple to see. We shall not forget it, and we 
have often spoken of it. The little visit of 
yourself and Mrs. Parker was to us all perfectly 
delightful and refreshing — to the young people 
and visitors — and you can hardly tell how 
much good you have done us all, or how much 
we all appreciate your visit. I failed to meet 
you in New York, but Mr. Eddy and myself 
were on the lookout for you in Philadelphia ; 
he and I would have been delighted to pay 
you some attention. We are all glad that 
your impressions of America are favourable. 
We shall think of you on your voyage, and 
trust you may reach your home and the 
scene of your important work in safety, health, 
and peace. You will return v/ith the conscious- 
ness that you have done us all good. I heard 
of your visit to Andover. I go there to-mor- 
row, and shall hear more. I am glad you could 
go there ; Professor Park is one of my most 
valued friends. 

"May the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ have you in His holy keeping now 
and always. Please tell Mrs. Parker how much 
we were all charmed with her visit to us ; we 
were happier and better for it. 

*' With kindest regards to you both from our 
household, 

" I am, 

** Most truly yours, 

''John B. Gough." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 37 

Here is a note of another kind : 

" Princeton, N. J., 

" October 2, 1873. 

" Rev Joseph Parker, D. D., 

'' Sir, 

" This is to inform you that the CHo- 
sophic Society of Princeton College have unan- 
imously elected you an honorary member/' 

Thus some men have greatness thrust upon them. 
It all indicates the same feeling of kindness, brother- 
hood, and masonry. Every Englishman with whom 
I travelled felt the same, and wondered at the 
abounding and never-ceasing hospitality. 



Henry Ward Beecher has been, with his devoted 
wife, our guest for six weeks. We had been their 
guests at lovely Peekskill. We must have said a 
good deal about razors during the latter part of 
their enchanting visit, else how otherwise could 
Mr. Beecher have written thus ? — 

" My dear Dr. Parker, 

" I send you a pair of razors. They must 
be good, for the man who sold them told me 
so. They are not grumblers or tinklers, but 
easy-going, silent, and meditative. 

" We reached Liverpool at 10.30, found the 
same rooms waiting for us that we had before. 



38 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Mother was hungry^ and ate supper at eleven 
p. m., and slept well after it i 

'' We have been talking of the Parkers pretty 
much all the time since we left. 

" I am a careful traveller, and seldom lose 
anything : but I grow careless with age, and I 
find that I left my heart behind me. If you 
do not find it, please send one in return, for, 
according to law, the landlord is responsible 
for all valuables left in his care. 

" I meet the Ministers at eleven o'clock this 
a. m., and it is now twenty minutes of the 
time. I will write a line this p. m. to Mrs. 
Parker, and give some account of the affair. 
** With much love, 

" Yours evermore, 

"Henry Ward Beecher. 
" Liverpool, 

" October i8, 1886." 

Then, again, on November 29, 1886: 

*^ I have a case of razors. If they do not 
suit, you should vote your beard to be made 
up of bristles^ or, as Mrs. Parker would say, 
* You are a pig !' ^ I shall send them by P. O., 
if they will take them, or by express — paid ; so 
do not pay over again ; and if they charge you 
aught, I charge you to let me know, and I will 
see to it at this end of the route.*' 

* My wife denies this ; but, remember, Binney denied Dick- 
ens. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 39 

This is only the postscript ; the body of the 
letter relates to another subject, and on that ac- 
count is most important : 

" Brooklyn, 

''November 29, 1886. 

''My dear Parker, 

*'I have just received and read the 
NewSy and your remarks upon the Bishop's in- 
hibition of Haweis. They are admirable, could 
hardly be bettered — good in spirit, in discrim- 
ination, and well fitted to do good among 
enlightened Churchmen. About that time 
when you were speaking, the Episcopal General 
Conference, now in session at Chicago, and 
Phillips Brooks, of Boston, the most able and 
influential Minister (not clergyman /) in the 
land, was uttering sentiments the most Cath- 
olic, Liberal, and Christian in regard to all 
other churches not Episcopal. 

" I am glad, on the whole, Haweis did not 
preach for you. Had he oflficiated, everybody 
would have said, ' Very well ; why not ? ' But, 
being forbidden to preach, everybody, with ten- 
fold emphasis, cried out, ' Why not ? ' 

" I enclose a paragraph as to Brooklyn af- 
fairs that may interest you. 

'' My health is good. I am just getting over 
the prostration following the voyage. 
** Ever yours, 

'' Henry Ward Beecher.'' 

Bearing on the same subject, I received a note 



40 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 



from another correspondent, which greatly pleased 
me : 

"Eastern Lodge, 
" Brighton, 
''November i, 1886. 

"Dear Dr. Parker, 

''Your remarks upon the inhibition of 
my friend Mr. Haweis were excellently con- 
ceived and expressed in admirable taste. 
" Very truly yours, 

"George Jacob Holyoake.*' 

This from a non-theist ! I can testify that, what- 
ever Mr. Holyoake may be or may not be theo- 
logically, he is not only a superb debater, he is a 
gentleman in his very soul. 



Delane called in. Showed him a new idea in 
journalism. I said, " It is quite true a man can- 
not serve two masters, but why may not a man 
have two servants?" He called on me to explain. 
Said I, " Let me write for the Morning Tory and 
also for the Morning Liberal, Thus : Mr. Glad- 
stone is going to address his constituents next 
week, and before hearing the speech, I write an 
article ready for the Tory of the next day. I 
begin thus : * The verbose and endless speech 
delivered by Mr. Gladstone last night to his long- 
suffering constituents was marvellous, even as com- 
ing from that master of rhetorical confusion and 
ventose elaboration. Not even the ex-Premier 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 41 

himself ever used so many words in pompously and 
ponderously saying less than nothing/ etc. Then 
in the Liberal I could say, respecting the same 
speech : ' For grasp of thought and aphoristic 
force the great statesman was at his best last night. 
His hearers were simply spellbound. The chief of 
the magicians held them entirely at his will. This 
speech will stand with the noblest Philippics of 
Demosthenes, and the smoothest music of Tully,' " 
etc. I then asked Delane what he thought of a 
notion that struck me as m-ore original than the 
creation itself. He asked where my conscience 
was. He asked me to define honesty. He de- 
manded at what University I had studied ethics. 
In short, he became quite moral. And me a min- 
ister ! It is really very awkward when laymen 
meddle with morals. They can be very nasty 
about it. 



NOTE VL 

My literary reputation is extending. Vambery 
called upon me. What a compliment ! He never 
calls on second-rate minds. He little knew I was a 
Dissenter — and was I the man to reveal the ugly 
fact? Why, they would expel me from the Eclec- 
tic Bicycle Club if they knew I kept a '' Noncon- 
formist conscience." In the genteel suburbs they 
think I am '' something in the City," which is true 
enough, so I need not enlighten them. Vambery 
was delighted with me. When he saw that I knew 
all about Ali Ekber, and that I could trace his own 
route from Kazvin to Tehran, he was delighted be- 
yond words. He said that next to me Lord Strang- 
ford was the most wonderful linguist in the world. 
English is the only language I can dream in, but I 
did not tell Arminius Vambery that. I am not 
going back on English, for it is simply astonishing 
how many good things could be said in English if 
they would only occur to the mind. So elastic 
is English that I believe it would lend itself to 
the expression even of poetic ideas, if one had 
any. 

There are many ways of getting a good deal of 
enjoyment out of life without spending much. For 
example, we are saving up to buy ourselves a car- 
riage for daily use in old age, and as a matter of 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 43 

fact we are already riding in it in imagination. We 
have settled that it is to be a landau ; then we can 
open it or shut it according to the weather. [I 
once made a few verses on the weather, which were 
once sung in public, but only once.] One day we 
think the landau shall be a very, very pale brown 
(a sort of mouse-coloured brown, don't you know), 
and another day we prefer a liver-colour. Once I 
proposed red wheels, but my wife withered me 
with a look. I still think they would look nice and 
warm when the snow was on the ground. We 
have determined to have machinery inside the car- 
riage, by which we can open and shut the landau 
when we please ; then we need not trouble the 
coachman, who, being a working-man, naturally 
shrinks from having too much to do. The man is 
to have top-boots. On that point my wife's mmd 
is made up. When we ride now in our one-horse 
shay from the livery stables [half a crown per hour, 
or a lump sum per job] my wife is invariably 
shocked by the man's get-up, especially by his hat. 
That hat ruins her comfort in driving. It is so 
brown, so oily, and so aged. Of course, when we 
are driving we cannot get out of the way of that 
sere and yellow leaf the coachman's hat. There it 
is ! It throws an autumnal yellow upon the very 
brightness of midsummer. It even depresses the 
horse. Mr. Wolfe says we ought to have a good 
stand-up horse, and a carriage worthy of my talents. 
An undeniably nice man is Mr. Wolfe, to speak so 
kindly of such poor possessions. It shows good 
feeling on his part, and is encouraging. I wish 



44 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

some warm-hearted soul was so much in love with 
my talents that he would present me with a carriage, 
that I might give them an occasional airing in the 
green lanes out Hendon way, coming back by 
Edgware Road. The carriage, however, is no diffi- 
culty to us ; it is the man that scares us. I could 
make money enough by my pen to buy the car- 
riage. Two leaders in the Times, three scorching 
reviews in the Saturday, a fusillade on Salisbury in 
the Contemporary, and there^s the carriage ! But 
the man, the dram-drinkmg man, the 'bacca-chew- 
ing man, the man who kicks the horses and 
smashes the harness when I am not there, the man 
who steals the corn and sells the hay, and gives the 
horse a cough and a touch of colic when he does 
not want to drive us out — that's the mischief ; that's 
the black un. It is astonishing how awkward even 
a coachman can be. As a preacher, I am bound 
to say that in the Bible there is not a single coach- 
man mentioned with respect. Even Jehu was a 
madcap. I don't believe they put up a headstone 
for him. 

My pen! Yes; that's the winning sword. Every 
time I fill an inkstand it is the same as putting fifty 
pounds into the bank. Say I, with swelling pride : 
Every drop of that ink is money ; every drop is a 
maxim, an epigram, or an epic in embryo. I hold 
the precious liquid where the sun can strike it, and 
I say : Golden fish are floating in that pool ; I see 
there tales, poems, sermons, snarling paragraphs, 
anonymous attacks, and poison for my enemies. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 



45 



Ha, ha ! What a liquid blessing is ink ! Of course, 
I don't get the money, but neither do I get the car- 
riage ; what of that ? I might any day get them 
both, and is not the title of my book " Might Have 
Been '' ? What business have other men to suc- 
ceed where I have failed ? I would have written 
*' Hamlet '* if it had occurred to me. Of course I 
would. What business had Shakespeare to sweep 
everything into his net ? I was coming along, and 
might have done both ^* Othello " and ^' King 
Lear." I did not refuse to do them — in fact, I was 
prepared to do them, but the fellow got ahead of 
me, and left me to lead a lazy life. Then in math- 
ematics — what I might have done ! But the whole 
thing was done before I came into visible existence. 
I advisedly say into visible existence, because all 
men were in the loins of Adam, and from one point of 
view it was a mere chance whether Shakespeare or 
I came out first. If I had come out first, the world 
would not have been where it is to-day. But 
Shakespeare came first, and left us nothing to do 
but quotation. Talk about justice ! Talk about 
man and brother ! There is no encouragement to 
buy literary apparatus. Look at my own case : I 
have a folding-desk, a silver-topped inkstand, a gold 
pen, a quart of ink, and a quire of paper, and when 
I look round for a job worthy of my talents, I find 
that Shakespeare has done everything, and that he 
is grinning at me over the prickles of a lace collar. 
But my mind is made up. I have cut out a career 
for myself. I will deny that the plays were written 
by Shakespeare — there's a field. I will knock him 



46 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

off his stool. I will expose him. I will suggest 
that I may have written the plays myself, and 
dropped them from the ceiling, and that the villain 
Shakespeare only picked them up and took them to 
the printer. As a professing Christian, I am bound 
to have my revenge. What is the use of having Ten 
Commandments, if you don't see that somebody 
else keeps them ? 



I have just taken a turn round the garden, and 
thought out the pen-and-ink idea in its commercial 
aspects. I like it. Literature suggests an idyllic 
life. I see where I could put up a neat writing- 
tent in the garden, and if it moves on a pivot I can 
go round with the sun. In such a tent I could not 
help writing, because ideas would flow upon one, 
and metaphors would drop from the golden labur- 
nums. Editors would be ringing my bell all day 
long, and rushing up in competitive hansoms, and 
I would get each of them to pay in advance. I 
have to trust them, or they have to trust me. It 
shall be on the second basis. I think a series of 
crisp articles abusive of my brethren might be a 
good seam to work. Personality is always popular. 
Of course, the articles would be anonymous, so that 
I could dine with my victims, and see how they 
took it. Spite need not interfere with hospitality. 
Having carved the man's soul, why should I not 
carve his leg of mutton ? Spite is a fine old fiend. 
I know a man [so modest !] who is all made up of 
spite. He is, of course, a Christian professor, but 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 47 

so spiteful ! He scratches ; he grins his fury ; he 
hates, so I don't think I will try the spite line. 
No ; leave that to the prince of the devils. The 
best thing to do would be to write a great novel. 
That would be easy. Get your characters and keep 
them moving, and there you are ! I have read some- 
where that what the public want is not " moral," 
but ^* thrill.'' Why not? But if I never sold a 
copy I should not go without reward, for ^^ to create 
within the mind is bliss," and my own characters 
would be good enough company for me. Writing 
has an elevating effect upon the mind. Suppose I 
sold only 

^ -jf * * ^ 

No. My mind is made up. There will be no 
tent in the garden. There will be no bitter para- 
graphs. It was a temptation of the devil, and I'll 
none of it. Rather than try to hinder good men in 
their earnest work, I will beg my bread. News- 
papers should be the allies, not the enemies, of the 
pulpit. 



No man could accuse C. H. Spurgeon of plagiar- 
ism. The idea is simply laughable. I wonder if 
other men ever plagiarised Spurgeon ? No. C. H. 
Spurgeon was honest through and through, even to 
his own hurt and cost in some social directions. 
That was a point the pastor of the Tabernacle would 
never consider. 



48 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Here is another letter from his genial pen : 

*' Westwood, 

"Beulah Hill, 

** Upper Norwood, 

''January 29, 1883. 

" Dear Friend, 

''I have been hitherto under the idea 
that I was to have the pleasure of preaching at 
the Temple on the 8th February, but my 
secretary told me to-night that it was the ist — 
that is, next Thursday. I earnestly hope it is 
not so, but I am in a great stew about it. Is 
it so ? Please send me a telegram. 

" I have had sorrow upon sorrow, or I would 
have written about it before, for I feel great 
delight in the exchange which has been made 
so far as it has gone, and I fear I look ungrate- 
ful. 

*' I am your man for the 1st, if you have so 
advertised me, but it will disappoint my peo- 
ple who meant to be there. We must make 
the best of it. 

*' If the 8th, I shall be glad, and I wish you 
would beg your friends to pray for me. 

*' The loss of two deacons who have been my 
friends in true love these twenty-five years has 
been a stunning blow, and must excuse me if I 
have been forgetful. 

" With kindest regards, 
" Yours heartily, 

^^C. H. Spurgeon/' 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 49 

Happily we had not fixed the date he feared, and 
I telegraphed to him accordingly. Here is his 
reply : 

" Westwood, 

''Beulah Hill, 

"Upper Norwood, 

''January 31, 1883. 

"Dear Friend, 

" I was greatly relieved last night by 
your telegram, which came to Balham to our 
deacons' meeting. Suppose we now fix Feb- 
ruary 15. Could you make my coming to be 
of any service to any of your societies or good 
works ? If so, use me at your pleasure. 

'* I am much touched by your kindness. At 
the Tabernacle we are all in a chastened condi- 
tion through our heavy bereavement. We 
shall not be able for years to fill up the gaps 
made by these two arrows of death. The meet- 
ing last night was tender ; we seemed endeared 
to each other by a feeling that we are so soon 
to part. Truly we may all see how wasteful 
it is to spend the few days of our sojourning in 
disputing about trifles. 

*^ Peace be to you and to your helpers. 
^* Yours heartily, 

'^C. H. Spurgeon.'* 

What a beautiful revelation of his pastoral heart ! 
How he loved his people, and lived for them ! 
Herein he was an example to all pastors. I do not 



so MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

know that I have had any appreciation of my pub- 
lic labours more precious than the following : 

"Westwood, 

"Beulah Hill, 

'* Upper Norwood, 

''March 8, 1884. 

*'Dear Dr. Parker, 

*^ Since your kindly service to the Stock- 
well Orphanage I have been restrained from 
writing to thank you through being exceed- 
ingly unwell. The pain is better now, though 
it leaves me so weak that to move from chair 
to chair is quite a feat. I am able to sit up to 
write, and my first duty is to thank you, I do 
so with all my heart. 

"You have been kindness itself to me. 
Without solicitation you have aided me in my 
work with brotherly heartiness. The Great 
Father reward you for this. I am burdened 
with a sense of personal unworthiness ; but the 
cause of the orphan is worthy of all service, 
and I am sure you will have a reward in advo- 
cating it. Still, I feel none the less a personal 
gratitude, which I will not attempt to express, 
except it will be in prayer to God for you, and 
your church, and your work. The Lord God 
Almighty bless you. 

'* What a sermon you gave the people upon 
the occasion of our orphans' visit ! That lat- 
ter portion about answers to prayer in the 
Divine sense touched me much. How little do 
we pray for! Much in words, but so little as 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 51 

to our interpretation of the words ! I pray for 
health — will it only come to me in the higher 
way ? It may be so. 

*^ Yours most gratefully, 

"C. H. Spurgeon." 

Ay, in ^^the higher way *' ! Let us get out of the 
prison of literalism into the open air of the spirit- 
ual ! 

On reading letters such as have been given, I can 
imagine some implacable critic remarking that they 
are all so full of praise or thanks as to suggest a 
comfortable conceit on the part of the gratified re- 
ceiver. I have little hope of making a favourable 
impression upon any unfriendly readers, or even 
upon those friendly readers who are by nature born 
to suspect the motives of other men. Yet it is in 
my power to comfort them all. They may rest 
assured that no public man of my acquaintance has 
received more letters of abuse and spite than have 
fallen to my share. If spite could kill a man, I 
ought not to be alive at this moment ; I ought, 
indeed, to be dead and buried, and far below the 
effect of any recalling trumpet — away where the 
resurrection is never heard of. I have been tra- 
duced, sneered at, opposed, and killed over and 
over again in anonymous public letters. Guns and 
pistols, darts and sabres, and the pestilence that 
walketh in darkness, have all gone for me, and yet, 
kind Heaven be praised, I am here to tell the 
ghastly tale. Now the bitterest of critics will allow 
me the hard-won solace of laying before him a few 



52 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

helpful testimonies, and I assure him that when he 
needs like comfort I will not be the man to pluck 
the fragrant rose from his grateful hand. Not a 
hard-working man amongst us has one encourage- 
ment too many in a life often troubled, often 
weary. 



My vestry on a Thursday morning often presents 
instructive, and sometimes amusing, scenes. It is 
my custom after the Thursday morning service to 
see anybody for a few minutes who may want to 
see me on any manner of business. I do not limit 
the business to purely ministerial affairs ; I provide 
a listening ear for the general and clamorous public. 

On one occasion a very pale-faced young man 
came into the vestry, and, after a moment's hesita- 
tain, said : '' I am studying to be a poet.** No 
sooner did I hear these ominous words than I 
touched my electric bell with my left foot, in re- 
sponse to which an assistant appeared, and we 
gracefully got the young budding poet out into the 
open air with the least possible delay. He was, 
however, more of a man than I had at first thought 
him to be ; for no sooner did he get home than he 
wrote me a letter to this effect : *' When I came 
into your vestry, you rang a bell to get me out ; 
when I next come, I hope you will blow a trumpet 
to welcome me in.*' The young man has not since 
appeared, and the trumpet, therefore, has not been 
called into requisition. When young men have to 
*' study " to be poets, they had better not begin; 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 53 

for, with Victor Hugo, I believe that to compose 
poetry is either easy or impossible. 

On another occasion a remarkably fine-looking, 
middle-aged lady came into the vestry to ask my 
advice under peculiar circumstances. She could 
speak three languages. She had a private income 
of over eight hundred pounds a year. She made 
her statement, up to a given point, with great sim- 
plicity and clearness. At that point, however, she 
broke away, saying that she was being pursued by 
persons who had apparently no object, but whose 
real purpose it was to do her some bodily injury. 
At that point my flesh began to creep, as did the 
flesh of old Eliphaz. I hate anything ghostly and 
mysterious of this kind. When anything is really 
ghostly I admire it, but ghostliness under such very 
large circumstances simply alarms and repels me. 
Said my visitor: " I go to a boarding-house, and for 
the first two or three days nothing can be more 
agreeable than the treatment which I receive ; at 
the end of that time, however, I see the waiter put 
something into the teapot, and I know it to be 
poison. I have studied toxicology enough to know 
that this blue mark upon my teeth could not be 
there if I were not being slowly poisoned by my 
enemies.'' I rang the same friendly bell with my 
foot (for it must be known that this bell is in the 
carpet, and that it can be rung without anybody 
knowing that the action has been taken), and in a 
few moments my really entertaining visitor was 
quietly conducted into the royal thoroughfare 
known as Holborn Viaduct. 



54 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Instances of quite other kinds have occurred both 
on Thursday and on Sunday. Seated in my chair 
on one occasion, I remember the vestry-door being 
opened, and the whole space seemed to be filled up 
by the largest and blackest face I had ever set eyes 
upon. No sooner did the wearer of that face come 
to me, than he laid hold of my hand with a vice- 
like grip, and simply opened a cavern of a mouth 
that seemed to be illuminated by the most daz- 
zlingly white teeth I have ever seen. The man did 
not speak, but simply laughed in the loudest and 
most continuous manner until my confusion was 
complete. When his laugh was concluded, he an- 
nounced his name as Josiah Henson, the prototype 
of Uncle Tom in the immortal work of Harriet 
Beecher Stowe. I can never forget that laugh, nor 
can I forget that black but radiant face. Whether 
Henson was ^* Uncle Tom " or not, he certainly had 
a very marked and memorable personality of his 
own. 

One Thursday morning a German professor called 
upon me, and showed me some really admirable 
testimonials. I have, however, now lived long 
enough to regard testimonals, even when they are 
genuine, with considerable suspicion and disfavour. 
On this occasion the German professor simply 
wanted a little money to enable him to go to Glas- 
gow, where an a appointment was awaiting him. 
He looked honest ; he spoke very agreeably. It ap- 
peared to me that his purpose and methods were 
perfectly simple and creditable. I ventured to say 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 55 

to him, in my most deferential, interrogative tone : 
** Are you really an honest man ? " It is as true as I 
live that the man answered me in the affirmative. I 
then asked him how soon he would be able to return 
the money if I lent him any. He said he would re- 
turn it certainly within one calendar month. I 
then handed him two sovereigns, which he wisely 
deposited in his pocket. That event occurred nearly 
six years ago. As the man declared himself to 
be honest, there can, of course, be no doubt that he 
did send the money back, but unfortunately it 
never reached me. It seems more charitable to 
blame the post-office than to reproach an unknown 
German professor, coming as he does from a country 
to which we are under such profound theological 
obligations. Speaking of borrowing, I am reminded 
of a very cautious Scotchman, who came to me to 
ask for the loan of a sovereign. No one will be able 
to guess the ground on which he supported his plea. 
I may as well, therefore, say at once that the man 
gave as his reason for wishing to borrow the sover- 
eign that he had often had the pleasure of hearing 
me preach. ** Now,'* said I, "that appears to me 
an excellent reason for your lending me a sover- 
eign, but how in the name of any star that ever 
burned it is a plea for you to borrow a sovereign of 
me I certainly cannot make out.** With my left foot 
I again touched my friend in the carpet, and he gave 
a nudge to another friend in the further vestry, and 
by dint of the very finest diplomacy ever practised 
by the human mind we got the cautious Scotchman 
out into the open air. Where he is now I really do 



56 - MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

not know, but if he is still in the fresh air it will be 
good for his health. 

Another visitor, akin to the above, yet slightly 
different from them, is the man who comes to me 
with hearty salutations, hopes I am very well, is 
delighted to see me, has heard me with the greatest 
gratification, and begs to thank me with the warm- 
est cordiality for my discourse. I then observe 
that he puts his hand behind his back, takes some- 
thing out of his coat-pocket, and wishes to sell me 
a coloured photograph of myself. My foot some- 
how instinctively goes to the bell in the carpet, and 
my friends reappear in considerable numbers, and 
we succeed in removing the intruder considerably 
before he has arranged to meet his friends outside. 

Only the other Thursday a man called upon me 
with a very simple request. He said : ^^ Dr. Parker, 
I want to ask you to give me and my people one 
little half-hour of your time.*' What could be sim- 
pler? What could be neater? What could be less 
clamorous or less exorbitant ? I said : '* Very good ; 
that shall be done if it will be really of any service 
to you. Now, where is it ? " He then proceeded to 
say it was at the very uttermost point of the East 
End of London. *^ Now," said I, ^' I live at Hamp- 
stead, and it will take me an hour and a half to get 
to the locality you indicate. What becomes of 
your request for one little half-hour of my time? '* 
I was so indignant that I continued my speech in 
these words : '^ If you had asked me to cut out the 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 57 

heart of one working day in the week and give it to 
you, I should have known that you had at least 
some appreciation of the favour you were asking ; 
but as you have chosen to put it as the sacrifice of 
one little half-hour, it is clear to me that you do 
not know the value of my time, and that it is my 
duty to decline to visit you under false pretences/' 
It is impossible for almost anything to be done 
publicly in London in one little half-hour. When 
men know that they are asking the surrender of 
most of a day, and plainly say so, we can deal with 
them as reasonable beings. 

I have, of course, callers of a very different kind. 
One comes to tell of some great grief at home, and 
to solicit personal and public prayer because of the 
overwhelming sorrow. Another comes to tell me 
that he has lost all his four children but one, and that 
his heart is broken, and that even the summer-time 
brings him nothing but darkness. Another comes 
to say that he is about to leave for the Cape, for 
New Zealand, for Canada, or for Australia, and to 
thank me for the services which he has enjoyed in 
the City Temple. Thus the callers come and go, 
leaving behind them mixed memories. I am glad 
of the opportunity of seeing my friends, and of see- 
ing some who have no specific claim to the title. 
All these incidents are so many lessons in human 
nature. I accept them as such, and endeavour to 
find in them material for profitable prayer and ex- 
position. 



NOTE VII. 

Pastoral life is a joy more than official. It is 
of the nature of parental life. The pastor is a 
member of every family ; no man can replace him. 
In sickness it is the pastor that is sent for. The 
people have heard him, watched the whole move- 
ment of his soul, and taken possession of the key 
of his influence. The pastor's life is a life of self- 
revelation, a daily out-giving and self-bestowal. 
The pastor who lives for his people will live in his 
people. 

Nonconformists should never give up their pas- 
toral service. They should have the key of homes, 
then they will get the key of hearts. We are not 
priests ; we are not constables ; we are fathers, 
elder brothers, physicians, who belong to the family. 
If any young man should want to do nothing but 
preach to his people, I should predict no good of 
him. The shepherd is the best preacher, if quality 
goes for anything. 

One of the sweetest old pastors I ever knew was 
Dr. James Morison. Here is a letter he sent me 
from Kilmalcolm, dated March 8: 

" Dear Dr. Parker, 

'* I feel it an utter impossibility to char- 
acterise in words my appreciation of the kind- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 59 

ness of which, to my astonishment, you made 
me the recipient when I was in London. As 
regards the great work you conduct in the 
City Temple, I am filled with wonder and 
admiration. May the Great Father still up- 
hold and guide you in the discharge of the 
high duties of your high position ! . . . 

'' Ever yours, with profound regard and af- 
fection." 

Never have any fear of preaching to great 
preachers. They are more charitable than others. 
They can make allowances ; they can excuse. 



A brilliant preacher may be a poor pastor, and 
vice versa. Let every man be credited with the kind 
of work he can do best. The lightning and the 
dew are both God's instruments. Do we blame a 
nightingale because it is not a lion ? Do we blame 
a lion because it cannot sing ? Yet we hear people 
talk of a preacher thus : He has not the learning 
of a Lightfoot or the polish of a Liddon ; he can- 
not thunder like Chalmers, nor can he charm like 
Wilberforce ; to the brilliance of Magee he can lay 
but small claim. If he could be and do all this, he 
would not be so much a minister as a monster. In 
the name of reason and justice, let every man be 
himself. 

I think the pulpit of this day is far in advance of 
any former pulpit. Possibly there are not so many 
outstanding names, but the whole level is higher. 



6o MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

The pew makes the pulpit. What the people de- 
mand they will get. If they want anecdotes and 
mufifin-pathos, they can drag down the pulpit to 
that level. A good deal of preaching seems to be 
addressed to invalids. There is a pill and mixture 
taste about it. We want more open air, and more 
going uphill. Will the press put down the pulpit ? 
Yes. When ? When correspondence puts down 
conversation; when postcards put down smiling; 
when telegrams put down love talking to love. 
The wonders wrought in chemistry by catalysis are 
worked in preaching by the personality of the 
speaker. 

He IS either a very great preacher or a very little 
one who can do without personal encouragement. 
Mr. Spurgeon liked to have his friends about him. 
Here's a letter bearing on the point : 

" Westwood, 

" Beulah Hill, 

" Upper Norwood, 

''June 4, 1884. 

''Dear Dr. Parker, 

*'0n June 19 is my fiftieth birthday, and 
it would be an honour to me if the chairman of 
the Congregational Union would give a short 
speech in the evening upon that occasion. It 
would also be a personal kindness if Dr, Parker 
did so, as Dr. Parker. 

*' The occasion is one which I promise not 
to repeat. The request I hope you can grant. 
"Yours very heartily, 

''C H. Spurgeon." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 6i 

I do not know that Mr. Spurgeon was a pastor in 
the common sense of the term, but he had a pas- 
tor's great heart, and many a ministry of love he 
privately fulfilled. How he cared for his orphans, 
and how they loved him in return ! Like all great 
natures, Mr. Spurgeon exaggerated all the little 
services which his friends rendered to him. How 
otherwise could he have written this letter? — 

''Dear Friend, 

'' I heartily thank you for your generous 
fellowship in my work among the fatherless. 
You have rendered aid in the most free-hearted, 
unsolicited manner, and have done it so grandly 
that I am left wondering and thanking. The 
Lord has ways of repaying kindnesses done to 
those who are so specially cast upon His 
Fatherhood as these dear children are ; He 
will recompense you according to His grace. 
I cannot recompense you, but I must acknowl- 
edge the debt, and I do so with heartiness. It 
would be painful to be under obligation to 
some men ; it is a pleasure to be indebted to 
you several times over, as I freely confess I am. 

" The Lord be with you, 

" Your grateful friend, 

*'C. H. Spurgeon. 

" February lo, 1886." 

How could such a man fail to touch the com- 
mon heart ? In Mr. Spurgeon's philanthropy there 
was nothing narrow. His Orphanage was not secta- 



62 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

rian. His principle of admission was most divinely 
human. But the whole age is widening. The 
earth casts out all littleness. Whenever you find a 
preacher who is a little man, you find a little man 
who has no business to preach. 



The death of Mr. Spurgeon removes the greatest 
religious enthusiast of this country and this age. 
The English pulpit has lost its most conspicuous 
figure. The only pulpit name of the nineteenth 
century that will be remembered is no longer the 
name of a living man. For forty years Mr. Spur- 
geon worked splendidly in every sense ; his sim- 
plicity, his constancy, his standstillness, won for 
him, through many difficulties, a unique and in- 
vincible position in Christian England. The in- 
tensity of his character gave him much of his 
power. He never saw the horizon ; he never looked 
for it. He did not see any real need for it. There 
would be no special harm in this, if he had not 
blamed other men for seeing what he himself did 
not perceive. This, however, was at once his 
strength and his weakness. Mr. Spurgeon was ab- 
solutely destitute of intellectual benevolence. If 
men saw as he did, they were orthodox ; if they 
saw things in some other way, they were heterodox, 
pestilent, and unfit to lead the minds of students 
or inquirers. Mr. Spurgeon's was a superlative 
egotism ; not the shilly-shallying, timid, half-dis- 
guised egotism that cuts off its own head, but the 
full-grown, overpowering, sublime egotism that 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 63 

takes the chief seat as if by right. The only col- 
ours which Mr. Spurgeon recognised were black 
and white. In all things he was definite. With 
Mr. Spurgeon you were either up or down, in or 
out, alive or dead. As for middle zones, graded 
lines, light compounding with shadow in a graceful 
exercise of give-and-take, he simply looked upon 
them as heterodox, and as implacable enemies of 
the Metropolitan Tabernacle. On the other hand, 
whilst there was no intellectual benevolence, who 
could compare with him in moral sympathy? 
Who so large of heart? Who so responsive to 
pain and need and helplessness? In this view Mr. 
Spurgeon was in very deed two men. The theo- 
logian and the philanthropist lived at opposite 
sides of the universe. Those who were damned by 
the theologian were saved by the philanthropist. 
Mr. Spurgeon's heart was immense and full of love. 
His Orphanage was the best commentary on his 
Tabernacle. In the Orphanage Mr. Spurgeon was 
the prince of Arminians ; in the Tabernacle he was 
the sturdiest of Calvinists. And all this was true 
to the form and expression of the remarkable head 
and face. The head was the very image of stub- 
bornness ; massive, broad, low, hard ; the face was 
large, rugged, social, brightened by eyes overflow- 
ing with humour, and softened by a most gracious 
and sympathetic smile. 

The ministry of Mr. Spurgeon has shown that 
an intensely religious method, as distinguished 
from a literary and academical style, can achieve 
very notable success. Mr. Spurgeon's was em- 



64 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

phatically religious or spiritual preaching. It was 
not literary ; it was not argumentative ; it was not 
coldly intellectual ; it was simply and thoroughly 
religious, sometimes almost ruthlessly so, for it 
forced every text to the same uses. Mr. Spurgeon 
had but one sermon, yet it was always new. To 
Mr. Spurgeon Christianity was not an argument, 
but a message ; not something to be discussed, but 
something to be delivered by the preacher and in- 
stantaneously accepted by the hearer. Other min- 
isters account for the universe ; Mr. Spurgeon sim- 
ply took it for granted, and made the best he could 
of it. Other ministers take the Bible to pieces and 
put it together again in some other shape ; Mr. 
Spurgeon took it from his mother's hands, in plain 
English, and accepted every word of it as the very 
speech of God. This Bible letter came straight 
from heaven, and the very post-mark on the face 
of it was a vital part of the contents. The en- 
velope also was fashioned in heaven. The commas 
and the semicolons were all there by direct inspira- 
tion and guidance of God. This was his faith, and 
it made him strong. The intense religiousness of 
his preaching was seen in the texts which he took 
even in the ministry of his boyhood. Other young 
preachers are naturally great in the treatment of 
Biblical narratives and anecdotes. They fasten 
eagerly, for example, on Daniel in the lions' den, 
and to the extent of a whole course of lectures 
they revel in the story of Jonah. They can handle 
drama better than doctrine. Mr. Spurgeon boldly 
went at once to the deepest and greatest themes. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 65 

At nineteen he preached to countless thousands 
from such texts as ''Accepted in the Beloved*'; 
'* No man cometh unto Me except the Father draw 
him**; ''And of His fulness have we all received, 
and grace for grace.'* Some men have never ven- 
tured to take those texts even after a lifetime of 
service. Mr. Spurgeon took them at once as the 
very seven notes that made all God's music, and he 
did so as by Divine right and impulse. As he be- 
gan, so he continued. He never changed ; he 
never went in quest of the fourth dimension or the 
eighth note ; his first and his last were one. 

The changes in public opinion respecting Mr. 
Spurgeon were astounding, so much so that we 
wonder in some cases if they were sincere. Mr. 
Spurgeon was described as " the mountebank of 
the pulpit,** as coarse, vulgar, blasphemous, min- 
gling jests and prayers with profane looseness and 
wildness. A distinguished editor spoke thirty-five 
years ago of Mr. Spurgeon's " vulgar slang.*' Mr. 
Binney once said that he would not enter a pulpit 
until Mr. Spurgeon had been out of it for six 
months. In one of her letters, printed in her 
memoir, George Eliot says : " My impressions fell 
below the lowest judgment I had ever passed upon 
him ** ; and again, " utterly common and empty of 
guiding intelligence or emotion ** ; and, again, the 
great novelist says : " It was the most superficial 
grocer*s back-parlour view of Calvinistic Chris- 
tianity, and I was shocked to find how low the 
mental pitch of our society must be, judged by the 



66 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

standard of this man's celebrity." Mr. Spurgeon 
himself gathered a volume of caricatures, censures, 
insults, and gibes of every kind, and sometimes 
looked into it to remind himself of his early recep- 
tion. He literally appalled the old-pattern church- 
goer. He made men laugh in church. He pressed 
humour into the service of theology. This Essex 
man drove bullock waggons through ecclesiastical 
aisles. His pulpit gown was a smock-frock. Yet 
now he stands at the top. He plants both feet on 
the giddiest eminence. Men speak of his vivid 
style, his simple Saxon, his unadorned English, his 
dramatic force. The change is in his critics, and 
not in himself. And he cared as much for the 
praise as he did for the ridicule. His head was 
never turned. Never did man carry an infinite 
fame with such sober modesty. He was ever sim- 
ple, loving, gentle, and boundlessly kind, except 
when he was stung by the nettle of '* modern 
thought." Then he became almost Papal; he ex- 
communicated whole assemblies ; he issued mani- 
festoes ; he darkened th^ whole chapel sky with 
thunder, whose bolts of tallow wrought no havoc. 
Yet '* modern thought" goes on, and men grow 
nobler in manhood. Even denunciation cannot 
turn back the summer-bringing year. So Mr. 
Spurgeon hindered nothing that was good, while 
he denounced many things that were bad. 

Mr. Spurgeon's prayers were not the least re- 
markable part of his ministry. They were crude, 
direct, definite, and determined on being answered 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 67 

at once. Sometimes, too, they abounded in quaint 
expressions and odd phrases. In his first London 
pulpit I heard him pray thus : " O Lord, may 
many souls be converted to-night that shall shine 
for ever as gems in the bracelets of Jesus.*' In 
praying for Mr. John B. Gough at the Tabernacle, 
he did not take the usual roundabout course of 
describing Mr. Gough as ** Thy servant who has 
come from a distant yet friendly country in order 
that he may," etc., but, stretching out his right arm 
in a favourite attitude, he bluntly said : '' God 
bless our friend Gough.*' To Mn Spurgeon prayer 
simply meant asking ; it seldom rose to spiritual 
contemplation, or lost the business-like petition in 
entranced and ecstatic communion with God. 

Mn Spurgeon's career has settled several im- 
portant points. He has proved that evangelical 
preaching can draw around itself the greatest con- 
gregation in the world, and hold it for a lifetime. 
He has also proved that it is possible to draw and 
to hold the greatest congregation without organ, 
or band, or choir, or painted window. He has 
demonstrated beyond all doubt or question that 
the voluntary principle can be so worked as to 
sustain the greatest religious and benevolent in- 
stitutions in the fullest vigour, and he has vividly, 
almost indeed sublimely, illustrated the Divine 
election which chooses its own instruments, pro- 
tects them in the face of all hostility, and brings 
obscurity to the point of world-wide renown. Mr. 
Spurgeon was ordained ^* in a mountain apart." 



68 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

The great voice has ceased. It was the mighti- 
est voice I ever heard — a voice that could give 
orders in a tempest, and find its way across a tor- 
rent as through a silent aisle. Very gentle, too, it 
could be, sweet and tender, and full of healing pity. 
That voice has ceased to sing those lower hymns. 
The rugged presence is withdrawn. Life's fight 
has closed in victory, and weariness has dropped 
asleep. Let us quietly look upon the image of 
rest, and look upon it through tears of thankful- 
ness. The great unimagined vision has dawned on 
the translated soul. Away yonder in heaven's 
eternal morning he sees all things in their right 
proportion and their right colour, and his soul, 
always responsive to sunshine and music, rises to a 
new exultancy of love as he meets and accosts in 
the City of Light many whom he had unwittingly 
misjudged and wronged. Meanwhile, the stress is 
greater upon those who remain. Each must further 
tax his strength so as to lessen the loss which has 
come upon the whole Church. The Christ-banner 
cannot suffer final loss. It will float over a con- 
quered world. Do or leave undone what we may, 
the holy work will go forward to completion, for 
thus it is appointed and written in the decrees 
which have ordained that summer shall melt the 
snow, and the stars in their courses shall fight for 
God. 



NOTE VIIL 

The world is in its humdrum old age. Break- 
fast, dinner, tea, and supper. That's all. Some of 
the pale originalities are lies. My newspaper this 
morning says, ** According to John Wesley ' reli- 
gion never was designed to make our pleasures 
less.' " Now, John Wesley never said anything of 
the sort. It was Isaac Watts. Not J. W., but 
I. W. The same paper says, ^^The people listened 
with wrapt attention." What kind of attention is 
that ? 

What's to be done with the unemployed ? Re- 
build London. Lay down a gigantic plan of the 
new London, and work it out bit by bit. Build 
London in centres : the railway centre — the market 
centre — the banking centre — the book and journal 
centre — the hospital centre, etc. Make an under- 
ground London, a sub-London, a London out of 
sight. Rearrange the supply of water and light 
and electricity. Make a waterway between Lon- 
don and the coast. Make the central city residen- 
tial, and snub the colonial suburbs, with their 
claypits and mock conservatories standing on stair- 



70 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

heads. Even the City could have a good deal of 
garden thrown into it. Do away with the four-mile 
radius. Pay every cabman at an office before 
starting. 



« 



What would I do with Ireland ? Let me tell 
you. Of course you'll smile. You may. My rem- 
edy for Ireland is to attach it to the mainland. 
Beaconsfield said many of Ireland's diflficulties arose 
from the fact that it was surrounded by ** the melan- 
choly main.'* Very well. Then do away with the 
main and its melancholy. Engineers can get over 
the difficulty of tides and currents and winds. Of 
course, begin where the distance is least. Only 
fools would think of beginning anywhere else. 
There is a man in Sunderland who can carry out 
the works. I mean the man who built the last 
great pier there. Of course, time would be required. 
Certainly. You don't think Rome was built in a 
day, do you ? When the poor street waif was told 
that the world was made in six days, she said Lon- 
don could hardly have been made in that time. But 
she was a born infidel — a stark-mad rampageous ra- 
tionalist. From Stranraer can you not see and hear 
the linen looms of Belfast ? Engineers can do the 
work if the State will find them the money. Then 
we shall hear nothing about Great Britain and Ire- 
land ; we shall hear only of a United and consoli- 
dated Kingdom. Rebuild London and bring Ire- 
land into the mainland ; there's work for you ! At 
present w^e are merely talking, drinking turtle soup, 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 71 

and toasting the Lord Mayor. We want something 
bigger, grander, wiser. 



The Lord Bishop of London called on me to-day 
and turned a cigar into smoke by throwing it into 
the fire. Fourpence gone at a stroke ! He had 
formed a plan for getting rid of Dissent. He told 
me, as the curate did, that I was not in ^' orders.'* 
He offered to ordain me. I asked if he could give 
me orders, and he said *^ Yes.'' Then I drew a cur- 
tain, and introduced him to the Romish Cardinal, 
who at once disputed the Bishop's orders, and said 
the Bishop was only a layman. I asked the Cardi- 
nal if he was in the Apostolic line, and he said 
"Yes." Said I, " He is apostolic who in an apos- 
tolic spirit does apostolic work," I asked them both 
to remain to luncheon — a quiet little thing, not 
worth describing ; and it was astonishing how hu- 
man both the great men were. Said I internally, 
^* One touch of luncheon makes the whole Church 
kin." It is difficult to be bigoted over devilled tur- 
key and ginger-beer, though there's something very 
sectarian about the latter. The Cardinal remained 
after the Bishop, and showed me another way of 
treating a cigar. 

'* These fellows," said he, '' are no more in the 
apostolic line than your shoemaker is." 

" Is that so, Cardinal ? " 

** Yes ; and they know it. They are impostors. 
I dare not tell you all that Leo has found out about 
them." 



^2 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

*' But, how well you agreed at luncheon ! *' 

" Oh yes ; we are all human/* 

" Then/' said I, *^ let us have more human inter- 
course and less ecclesiastical pretension. Let us 
eat and drink, and to-morrow ecclesiasticism will 
die." 



Lord Salisbury sent for me. He was very plea- 
sant. ^^ Parker/* said he, '' drop in any time you are 
passing and take pot-luck." I replied, '' The same 
to you, and many of them.*' I was nervous. It 
was in the middle of May, yet through sheer ner- 
vousness I was on the point of saying, '^ I wish you 
a happy New Year.** I am the only Dissenting 
minister who is on hob-nobbing terms with a real 
Marquis. This makes Dissent almost respectable. 
On this ground I have been asked to join the local 
tennis club. The clubbers did not name my blaz- 
ing genius, my unfathomable erudition, or my lovely 
disposition ; they remarked only on my friendly re- 
lation to the Marquis. What is the chief end of 
man? To know a Marquis and glorify him for 
ever. 

The Marquis said : 

*^ I like your notion about connecting Ireland 
with the mainland.*^ 

And through nervousness I said : 

** You are another.*' 

** My notion,** he continued, not heeding the 
irrelevancy of my remark, " is that we should fill up 
the channel with the carcases of the Whigs and the 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 73 

Dissenters ; we could pile them on one another, 
and top them with Gladstone and Harcourt, and all 
that gang, including all the Welsh Church robbers 
and all the Dissenting bodies." 

I grew red with rage, and said : 

'* Do you know that I am a Dissenter and a 
Gladstonian ? '* 

But a flunkey, six feet four high, brought a card 
to the Marquis, and so ended our interview. 



The worst of it is, you cannot contradict an 
astronomer^ and get any real credit for ability. 
When he tells you that one star is distant from 
another nine hundred and eighty-seven millions of 
miles and fourteen inches, one feels that he pledges 
his conscience. The inches have quite a moral 
sound. As for the millions of miles, we might 
hack away at them with a blunt axe, but we dare 
not touch them because of the inches. What the 
mouse can do for the lion ! 



NOTE IX. 

Been at Hawarden. Spent week with Mr. Glad- 
stone. We spoke a new language each day, 
fluently beginning with Chinese. I got up on my 
subjects, and took good care always to start the con- 
versation myself, so that I could extemporise my 
boundless knowledge. I well remember beginning 
on the Round Towers of Antrim, knowing how 
deeply he was interested in all Irish questions. I 
thought he would like to know something about the 
round towers, as I supposed his studies had never 
taken him into such a subject. In polished Chinese 
I descanted on the three round towers in Antrim, 
which I described as a maritime county, and even 
ventured to say that it was in the province of Ulster. 
I told him that one round tower at Antrim was 
ninety-five feet high. I was very eloquent on the 
three round towers. Mr. Gladstone listened intently, 
so I felt I was making an impression upon him. 
When I paused for a moment, he briefly remarked : 
**You have overlooked the fourth of the Antrim 
towers — only a fragment, it is true — near the old 
church of Trummery.'* Imagine my mortification ! 
I thought I had broken virgin soil. I said I must 
have been thinking of Clare, in the north of Munster, 
where I knew there were three round towers. He 
asked me to name them, and I said Drumcliff'e, 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 75 

Dysart, and Kilnby, whereupon he remarked, '^ You 
have omitted a fourth, at Inniscaltra/' This was 
scorching. I was the man who had spread a net for 
the bird. But I was not to be beaten. It seemed 
to me that four was the only sure number, so I said 
there were four fine round towers in the county of 
Dublin, every one of them at least a thousand years 
old. He said : '* No, there are only three round 
towers there, probably in some cases more like three 
thousand years old.** I took quite a dislike to Mr. 
Gladstone. I thought I would leave him and be- 
come a Tory. He knew too much for me. I could 
make a better figure under another leader. But I 
stayed on. 

One day, the language being pure Sanscrit, we 
roamed in the park, and seemed to enjoy each other's 
society. Not a single reference did I make to the 
round towers of Ireland. It was not along that line 
that my fortune was to be made. In a tone of rare 
academic dignity Mr. Gladstone asked me if I re- 
membered how India ranked in the inscriptions at 
Persepolis and Naksh-i-rustiam, and I said no doubt 
I did once know, but I had forgotten. He then 
said that, *' according to Herodotus, India was the 
twentieth satrapy,'* but I never took much stock of 
anything Herodotus said. He was a washerwo- 
many sort of historian. In a paragraph of noble 
eloquence Mr. Gladstone assured me that Dyanshpi- 
tar must be regarded as reflecting a primitive revela- 
tion, and I agreed with him, in order to get rid of 
the prickly subject, and then he went through all 



76 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

the gods in the Vedic pantheon until my mind reeled 
in positive blindness. In the middle of a magnifi- 
cent sentence, of which I remember only the little 
insignificant words '' Brahmanaspatic " and " Hir- 
anygarbha," we were (at least, I was), happily hu- 
manised by a little child. A sweet little darling 
rushed up to Mr. Gladstone, and seized his hand by 
both her own. Then she burglariously thrust one 
hand into Mr. Gladstone's coat-pocket, and out of it 
brought tw^o pieces of ginger-bread, three packets of 
barley-sugar, and a doll five inches long. 

** These are for Dotty,'' said he. 

" Now," said she, '' let's sing * Onward distian 
sojers.* *' And her step became music. 

I discovered it was the gardener's little child, and 
that the greatest of men made a pet of her. I then 
mentally resolved not to change my leader. I knew 
him then. I saw the Christ gleaming through his 
softened eyes, and my heart went out to him in a 
great wave of honest love. 

In my journey back from Hawarden I got into 
the same compartment with Thomas Binney, the 
foremost Nonconformist minister of his day, and a 
clergyman joined us after a few stations. We knew 
by his dress that he was a clergyman. From topic 
to topic he jumped like a desultor, and at last he 
came to the subject of Dissent. Then he spake with 
his tongue. I quote the psalmist in one of his 
stormiest moods. 

'' How I should like to meet that man Binney ! *' 
said he. " I believe I should knock him down.'* 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. ^^ 

^^Why?" said I. 

'* For his abuse of the Church." 

^* Oh, indeed ; I thought he was a Christian minis- 
ter/' said Binney. 

" He is a foul-mouthed Dissenter," was the snap- 
pish reply. 

" You take a severe view of the case." 

" I hate Dissent." 

Then Mr. Binney referred to the country we were 
passing through, and by chance he mentioned Ha- 
warden. 

'* Another man I should like to knock down," said 
the clergyman. 

'^ Is he a Dissenter? " said the unrevealed and un- 
suspected Binney. 

^^ He's a Liberal and a tyrant and a revolutionist." 

"Indeed!" 

" Yes. He would ruin the country if he had his 
way. A Churchman ! He would disestablish the 
Church to-morrow if it suited his purpose." 

*^Do you think so? Is that the view of the 
clergy as a whole ? " 

" No. There are sneaks in all bodies. There 
are squashy boneless clergymen, but the most of the 
clergy hate Gladstone and all his ways." 

Mr. Binney then talked about books, histories, 
poems, and the general outlook of England. He 
talked well, and the clergyman knew it. 

*' I know Mr. Binney," said I, ''and I think you 
would like him if you knew him." 

'' Never." 



78 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

*' I am not so sure of that." 

'^ I would gladly knock him down.** 

Mr. Binney went into the refreshment-room, and 
brought back two luncheon-baskets and a number 
of oranges, and asked the clergyman to join us. 

** On one condition,'* said he. 

*^Well?" 

'' That if you ever come this way you will take 
pot-luck at the rectory. Here's my card." 

Then we fell to. Mr. Binney told stories. All 
went happily. We were completely one in the 
broad humanities. 

Another hour quickly passed, the conversation 
being lively and non-ecclesiastical. Then came the 
hand shaking, the adieus, the regrets. The clergy- 
man got out, and just as the train was moving out of 
the station ]\Ir. Binney handed his card to the cleric. 
He could not read it at once, as he had to search 
under his top-coat and another coat for his pince- 
nez, and by the time we were just outside the plat- 
form he shook his hand at Mr. Binney, who had 
kept his head steadily out of the window ; but it 
was a friend's shake, ending in a wave of reconcil- 
iation and goodwill. 

If men only knew one another better ! If there 
were more luncheon-baskets ! 



NOTE X. 

Ran down to Hughenden for a few days to see 
Ben Disraeli. I thought this only fair, after hon- 
ouring Mr. Gladstone with so much of my attention. 
Fair's fair, even in politics. Disraeli would have 
felt it if he had known that I had spent so much 
time with Gladstone. I wondered on what subjects 
I should cram so as to floor the brilHant Jew, and 
set my contemptuous foot upon his white waistcoat. 
He was a striking-looking man, was Ben the brilliant 
— tall, spare, large-eyed, and ringleted in a small 
way. He seemed gratified to see me. I got up 
my own genealogy, and put into his hands the an- 
cient charter, by which we reserved the right to 
hang ourselves if we felt so disposed : Mandavinus 
enim ballivo libertatis predicte quod ad certos dies, 
etc. Having glanced at this, Ben said I might sit 
down, and welcome. He said he had respect for 
the men of the Tyne, north and south. He asked 
me how things were getting on at the Devil's Water, 
and I said, '' Pretty middlin' ; hoo's yersel' ? " 
He seemed puzzled. Incoherently I asked him 
what he thought of Monism, as I myself was deeply 
devoted to the unity of thought. He said if I would 
pick out the very smallest *' damn " in the English 
language that would expressly convey his deliberate 
estimate of Monism. I then asked the great leader 



« 



8o MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

if he had ever been in a Dissenting chapel, and he 
blandly smiled. 

** What on earth do the Dissenters want ? " he 

inquired. 

To which I answered : 

** What on earth dont they want ! " 

We then settled down a moment. 

'' And how did you leave my illustrious rival?" 

'^ I left him reading," said I. 

^^ What ! still reading?" 

^'Yes." 

*' And at what point is Brutus going next to put 
his knife into the Empire? " 

*' For the very reason that he is a Liberal, he 
thinks he is a true Conservative." 

'' Tush ! " 

" What are you prepared to give us, Mr. Dis- 
raeli ? " 

He turned up the whites of his eyes like the 
fabled Dissenter, and said : 

^' Confidentially, what would you like to have?" 

** That's a large order, Mr. Disraeli." 

** Name your policy." 

*' What do you really think we want ? " 

*^You want all the revenues of the now Estab- 
lished Church to be handed over to you." 

" Not for a moment." 

*^ You want to unfrock all the bishops, and strut 
about in their cast-off lawn." 

'' Not a bit of it." 

** You want to unchristianise the State. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 8i 

" Never ! '' 

" Well, that's what the squires think you want, 
and you touch them on a very tender point. You 
see, they are men of conscience. I dined with a 
dozen fox-hunting squires the other night, and one 
of them said, * I'll be damned if they shall disestab- 
lish the Church.' He was very earnest. He has a 
living in his own disposal, which I believe he is 
keeping warm for his intended son-in-law. He 
thinks that disestablishment is but another name 
for Atheism." 

" Poor old dog ! " said I, perhaps too thought- 
lessly. 

" Why, even Gladstone would not disestablish 
the Church. Bishop-making is one of his ways of 
taking exercise. You never catch him hunting ; 
you never heard of his moor-shooting in his native 
Scotland. He makes bishops and canons and 
deans. He is the biggest ecclesiastical founder we 
have." 

** Yes ; but even he says the argument for estab- 
lished churches is dead." 

" And what do we care for argument ? The 
House of Commons is not ruled by logic. We 
have an Established Church, and we mean to keep 
it." 

I then passed on to his novels. 

" And how did * Lothair ' go, on the whole ?'* 

** Splendidly. All the countesses of England 
wept like a rainy day, and several duchesses broke 
forth into coruscations of wit, and, meteor-like, 
flamed through the nocturnal sky." 



82 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

'' Bless me ! " said I. 

'*They love that sort of piety/* he continued, 
** which appeals to the fancy without disturbing the 
conscience — a circumambient, empyrean, dreamy- 
blue piety — a rare sort, I admit, but I know a bank 
where the wild thing grows. When you want cor- 
uscation, drop me a line." 

*' I wonder, Mr. Disraeli,'' said I, '^ you have not 
worked up the Vedas into an English novel ; there's 
material enough there." 

** Yes ; I have thought of it. The Brahmans 
(twiceborn men) would furnish an artist with a 
whole cast of characters. They were sensual, red- 
limbed, and divided into two sections — Kshatriyas 
and Vaisyas. These are names which fire my 
imagination." 

I had taken portmanteau enough down for a 
week, but a prayer put an end to my scheme. Ben- 
jamin prayed at the family altar a prayer in which 
this passage occurred, '' Give Thy servant travelling 
mercies on the morrow," by which sign I knew 
that the Manor was tired of me. 

What a blessing to have a home to go to ! I 
thought it too bad to send a hint to me in this 
roundabout way. But Ben was always mysterious. 
I have often noted that many prayers answer them- 
selves, and that most prayers would do so if you 
would only let them alone. In this instance the 
God of Abraham saw fit to give me answer by im- 
mediate return. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 83 

What do I think of Mr. Gladstone? I think him 
the greatest Englishman of the century. He is 
massive, sincere, majestic. If he had humour he 
would be too good to live. Eagles don't laugh. 

What a miserable trick in criticism it is to com- 
pare one man to another, and complain of him that 
he is not somebody else ! Gladstone is unequal to 
Coleridge in the sense that a lion is not equal to an 
eagle. A lion cannot even flutter, much less fly ; 
but there is meaning in the kindling of his eye. 

Disraeli says, "What you please'*; Gladstone 
says, '' What I please.'' Two different policies. 
He who could unite them would be greater than 
either of the rivals. 

Gladstone is not concise. Disraeli is very epi- 
grammatic. Welldon, of Harrow, combines elo- 
quence and pith. I never knew a man so felicitous 
in three-sentence speeches. I have heard him 
make a score of them in one day, and the last was 
always the best. He is a giant who can play at 
marbles. He has a huge muscle, but it is always 
pushing you into the dining-room or in some other 
comfortable direction. His muscle is your trusty 
friend. 



NOTE XL 

What opportunities ministers have of studying 
character under almost every variety of form and 
colour! I have kept a pen-and-ink album, from 
which I may take two examples. 

There was Peter Short, who came into the world 
with great talents and went out of it with great 
disappointments. If Peter's mind had been as big 
as his voice, he would have been heard of. He 
spoke with a bow-wow which made those who did 
not know him think he must be a great man at 
home. And so fluent ! At a committee-meeting 
he would '^ rise to order '' twenty times, and twenty 
times would sit down amidst loud applause. But 
didn't he catch it at home ! Didn't the ferret hunt 
the rat ! 

Robert Jones never opened his mouth at a com- 
mittee-meeting, but silently commented on the 
speeches, and in going home in the omnibus, didn't 
he pour forth streams of criticism ! He amended 
every resolution, snubbed every speaker, and made 
havoc of every poHcy. What wonder that in get- 
ting out of the omnibus he felt tired, and even 
persuaded himself that he had taken an active part 
in the official proceedings ! He did, really. It 
was a psychological mystery. Without opening 



MIGHT HAVE been. 85 

his mouth, he yet imagined that he had been talk- 
ing all the time. 

I may here remark that man is odd. I had a 
member of my congregation, many, many years ago, 
who could not attend evening services on account 
of the night air. That man got rich, and went into 
Parliament. And Parliament, I believe, sometimes 
sits at night. But, then, look at the difference be- 
tween a Dissenting chapel and the House o' Com- 
mons ! There's a lot o* lying done by respectable 
men. 

The great stumbling-block in the way of Chris- 
tian progress is the salary of the minister. I speak 
of the Dissentmg churches. Church life has become 
too much a question of beg, beg, beg; morning, 
noon and night, the collection-box is forthcoming. 
Ministers may be gagged because of the salary. 
They would be stronger men but for the pay. 
And I say this without reflecting upon them. 
They have families. They deserve in many cases 
double what they get. And their people are al- 
ways changing. It is right, too, that there should 
be collections. It is a poor religion that restrains 
or quenches its love. I know it. Yet somehow 
the Church is snowed up by circulars, appeals, 
cards, bazaars, boxes, weekly envelopes, pew-rent 
papers, and all sorts of begging apparatus. I do 
not see what is to be done to mitigate the case. 
The cure is not to be effected at the point of ma- 
chinery : it could be effected at once, and glori- 



86 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

ously, if ever}^ man would set aside one-tenth of 
his income for Christian purposes. There would 
be an end of all worrying, and there would be mil- 
lions in the treasury of the Church. 

Mr. Spurgeon, in view of preaching at the City 
Temple on Thursday morning, February 15, 1883, 
wrote thus : 

'' February 10, 1883. 

'' Dear Dr. Parker, 

'' You have crowned your kindness by in- 
viting me to your hospitable home, and how 
gladly would I accept the invitation if I dared ; 
but I must get you to repeat it, when I should 
feel easy in accepting it. 

'' I must be at Tabernacle at six, and preach 
at seven on the Thursday, and I feel I could 
not do the work properly if I went home with 
you and back again in the interval. It would be 
an unalloyed pleasure to me, but the duty 
must stand first. 

'' I do not feel myself so fresh and free at 
sermonising as in former days ; I therefore 
have to be more careful in preparing. 

" I thank you with great earnestness for the 
many kind words which you have spoken 
about me. May you have a recompense from 
the Highest ! 

'' I do not feel at all well; but if I am to be 
ill, I hope it will be after Thursday. . . ." 

Duty first. Yes; that was Mr. Spurgeon's 



« 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 87 

motto, and it should be the motto of every honest 
man. The men who have failed are the men who 
have put duty second. The age we live in is lack- 
ing in discipline. Letter-carriers now smoke their 
way back to their offices after delivering the letters, 
but whilst they are yet wearing the Queen^s uni- 
form. As for work ! The question now is. Why 
open shops ? Why not have six half-holidays in 
the week? Why work more than four hours a 
day? I do not call this a good sign of the times. 
The men who will save England, and, indeed, save 
any country, are Adam Bede's successors. Thank 
God, we still have Adam Bedes in our labour 
camps — men who make work a religion and honesty 
a duty. There are working-men who are born 
gentlemen, children whose virtue and whose skill 
make labour an exalted profession. It is impossi- 
ble for such men to scamp their work ; they would 
have to unmake themselves before they could 
stoop to play the knave's mean game. 



NOTE XII. 

I HAVE had a wonderful talk with George Eliot. 
The real name is, as everybody knows, Mary Ann 
Evans. She used to be a Dissenter — quite a chapel- 
woman ; but in due time she became too big for 
chapel and too wise for church. We got her to 
hear Mr. Spurgeon, and rare fun she m.ade of him. 

'*Well,'' said I, ^^what were your impressions?** 

^* Never heard anything more utterly common 
and empty of guiding intelligence and emotion.'* 

'^ But the voice?" 

*' Verj^ fine — very flexible and various.'* 

"And the doctrine?" 

*^ It was a libel on Calvinism that it should be 
presented in such a form." 

"You really think so?" 

" Horribly destitute of insight. He never once 
touched the real ground of his subject.** 

" Then, what did he give you ? " 

" Plenty of anecdotes, poor and pointless — Tract 
Society anecdotes of the feeblest kind." 

"Tut, tut! How you must have been disap- 
pointed ! " 

"Yes. His doctrine seemed to look no farther 
than the retail Christian's tea and muffins." 

"Ay, ay ! I was hoping you would be pleased." 

" It was the most superficial grocer's back-parlour 
view of Calvinistic Christianity." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 89 

" You don*t despise a back-parlour, I suppose, 
even if it is a grocer*s ? " 

^* Not necessarily/' 

'' Adam Bede was not an aristocrat, nor Dinah, 
nor Mrs. Poyser, nor Silas Marner. I don't sup- 
pose any of them had a back-parlour.'* 

"Don't mistake me," said Mary Ann ; " it is 
quite possible to talk sense in a grocer's back-par- 
lour." 

" And quite possible," I added, " to talk nonsense 
in so fine a drawing-room as this." 

Rude, no doubt. But I am gifted with a delicate 
faculty of slipping the guillotine through a man's 
neck without his feeling it. Do not think this gift 
is to be acquired. It is an original and incommu- 
nicable gift. 

" Well," said I, " when Mr. Spurgeon's critics have 
done half the good he has done, I will listen with 
patience to what they have to say." 

" But you cannot approve his theology r" 

" As to his theology, I can only say that it is the 
ground and reason of all the grand service he has 
rendered. I would like you to remember that, if 
missionary societies have done any good, they owe 
their very existence to the kind of theology you 
despise." 

" But have they done any good ? " she asked. 

" Madam," said I, " let us not discuss such a 
question. Let us try to agree in service if we can- 
not agree in doctrine. I want you, the brilliant 
author, the receiver of thousands, to give me a 



90 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

cheque for five hundred pounds to be distributed 
amongst the orphanages of London." 

That stunned her. I saw the tears gather in her 
eyes — the eyes that shone that night of long ago. 
I continued : 

*^ Nothing but the Gospel of Jesus of Nazareth 
will go out after the lost. The Binomial theorem 
does not care a button about the souls of men. 
Your admiration of Beethoven's 'Andante' and the 
' Moonlight Sonata ' will little help the broken- 
hearted. Your holiday-making at the Burg von 
Schwaneck won't lift the cloud that darkens over 
weary lives, nor your rambling on the Monchsberg, 
or over the hawkweed at places like Nymphenburg. 
All your chatter about Holbein's ' Madonna,' or 
Titian's ' Zinsgroschen,' or the works of Teniers, 
Ryckhart, Terburg, or Guido, amounts to nothing, 
if not indeed to base mockery, in view of the thou- 
sands who are drawn unto death. Come, woman, 
come, help the orphans that have never been 
painted by Rubens or Murillo ! " 

I thought she would have turned me out, but the 
angels vv^ere on my side, and they won. She gave 
me the cheque. 

Oh the things that might have been ! The angels 
that might have sung over the fields, and the char- 
ities that might have softened the hardships of life ! 
Oh, to think of it ! How rich the rich might make 
themselves, and how might the strong make mighty 
the sons and daughters of weakness ! O life of 
mine, what thou, even thou in all thy littleness, 
mightest have done ! 



NOTE XIII. 

We have had a great meeting in the Mansion 
House to consider the best means of evangeHsing 
London. The Bishop of London presided. The 
Archdeacon moved the first resolution, and I sec- 
onded it. The resolution was to the effect that in 
face of the common enemy — unbelief, drunkenness, 
sensuality, gambling, and commercial immorality — 
it was high time for Christians to combine in a holy 
alliance, offensive and defensive, on behalf of the 
sovereignty of Christ. The Bishop of Rochester 
moved the next resolution, and the President of the 
Wesleyan Conference seconded it. Then Mr. Spur- 
geon prayed, and was followed by the Chairman of 
the Congregational Union in a most spiritual ad- 
dress, which deeply affected the whole assembly. 
The moment was most fortunate for a gentleman in 
the audience, who moved ''That this assembly re- 
grets all past differences, and pledges itself to unite 
in a great brotherhood to oppose the whole policy 
of the devil in whatever guise he might seek to ruin 
the world." 

The Bishop of London took me aside at the close 
of the meeting, and shook hands most warmly. 

'' This," said he, ''should have occurred years ago. 
Why, my dear brother " — a pressure of the hand — 



92 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

** we are really one in heart, one in the supreme 
love, one in our sovereign purpose — never let us 
think evil of one another.'* 

I then asked him if he would preach in the City 
Temple, and he instantly answered *^Yes,** and he 
came, and his word was with power, and the glory 
of the Lord filled the Temple. Nor was the bless- 
ing confined to our side, for the Church of England 
shared the overflowing life, and my neighbouring 
Rector held out both hands in token of masonry 
and thankfulness. Then was the word of the Lord 
exceedingly magnified, and great grace prevailed 
like a river over pastures dying with thirst. Of 
course, there was a great outcry from Worldliness, 
Gaiety, Fashion, Selfishness, Indifference and Un- 
belief, but that very cry we regarded as a proof 
that the Spirit of heaven had filled our obedient 
and grateful hearts. 

Oh, the things that might have been ! the land- 
scapes that might have blossomed as orchards ! the 
vines that might have grown wine for God ! 

Soon after this, who should I meet in Piccadilly 
but Charles Dickens ! I told him the good news, 
and he rejoiced over it. " I hate all bigotry,'' said 
he, " and all uncharitableness. I have written a Life 
of Christ for my children, as well as a History of 
England, and when a child leaves me to go out into 
the world, I always give him or her a New Testa- 
ment, and express the hope that every day some 
portion of it may be read. Who should join us but 
John Stuart Mill ! He, too, was glad that preju- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 93 

dice had given way before reason. '* Keep/* said he, 
in a pathetic tone, " to Jesus of Nazareth, and noth- 
ing in the way of opposition can stand before you. 
Men may kill the literal Jesus, but they cannot 
kill his spirit. Socrates was put to death, but the 
Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and 
spread its illumination over the whole intellectual 
firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but 
the Christian Church grew up a stately and spread- 
ing tree, overtopping the older and less vigourous 
growths, and stifling them by its shade. These 
very words you will find in my new book on ' Lib- 
erty,* which will be out in a week or too.** 

It seemed to me that the kingdom of heaven had 
descended, and that men walked with angels. It 
was more and more a wonder to me that feud and 
war and blood and shame should have followed the 
Cross, and have been deemed essential to its pro- 
gress. The bitterest enemies of Christ have been 
men who have borne His name. Only Christians can 
really hurt Christ. '* And Judas knew the place *' ; 
the disciple tracked the footprints and brought the 
ruffians to their prey. Iscariot was deadlier than 
Herod. 



I have mentioned the name of Charles Dickens, 
and done so with grateful affection. I know of no 
biography to compare with his, for I have not found 
a bitter word in it from first to last. All is sun- 



94 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

shine — all is gentle humour. What patience he 
had with young authors I How he criticised, sug- 
gested, amended, and encouraged ! I do not know 
of any minister who has taken equal pains with 
young preachers. Then, how Charles Dickens ex- 
erted himself to help poor artists and writers and 
widows! He was addicted to works of charity; 
he loved them, and therefore he found strength 
and time to do them. I shall be told that as an au- 
thor he lived an idyllic life. Did he? This seems 
like it : 

** Divers birds sing here all day, and the 
nightingales all night. The place is lovely, and 
in perfect order. I have put five mirrors in the 
Swiss chalet (where I write), and they reflect 
and refract in all kinds of ways the leaves that 
are quivering at the w^indows, and the great 
fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. 
My room is up among the branches of the 
trees, and the birds and the butterflies fly in 
and out, and the green branches shoot in at the 
open windows, and the lights and shadows of 
the clouds come and go with the rest of the 
company. The scent of the flowers, and, in- 
deed, of everything that is growing for miles 
and miles, is most delicious." 

Who would not be an author? Who would not 
have a chalet? Nothing easier : imagine characters, 
throw them into droll situations, get them into 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 95 

funny talk, add a stroke or two of pathos, and out 
comes the chalet — out comes the summer idyll ! 



My feeling is that the whole subject of preaching 
has to be reconsidered. Social conditions in gen- 
eral, and educational conditions in particular, have 
undergone changes whose influence must tell upon 
even the most venerable institutions. The pulpit 
is no longer secure when the Bible which provides 
its subjects is torn to pieces by a scholarship that 
is at once fearless and incomplete. 

Do preachers, as a rule, expound the right Bible? 
That many do so is undoubted. Is there not a 
danger of so treating the Biblical letter as to miss 
the Biblical spirit, and thus drag down the practice 
of preaching to an inferior and unworthy level ? I 
cannot but feel that the Bible is much more than 
an artistic mosaic of literature. The Bible cannot 
be bound by the limitations of technical grammar. 
Above the grammar stands the Revelation, the only 
judge of which is a good and honest heart. Do 
preachers remember this, or do they try to establish 
a species of book-idolatry ? 

My experience leads me to the conclusion that 
people are tired of hard and inexpansive dogma. 
They arc not tired of truth, but of the absurd con- 
ception that the whole truth can ever be finally ex- 
pressed in human words. Man is called to the 
patient quest of truth not to its complete acqui- 



96 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

sition. To love truth is orthodoxy ; to put truth 
into cast-iron forms may be the worst unbelief. It 
is here that preaching must begin its own reform. 
Not in homiletic rules or artistic executions, but in 
spirit and purpose must preaching realise its fullest 
and divinest power. The purpose of preaching is 
to nurture the soul in goodness and to comfort the 
life in daily sorrow — such preaching will never fail 
to win the deepest and holiest confidence of hu- 
man hearts. 

Such ar conception of preaching would at one 
stroke remove all the petty and frivolous criticisms 
which Hmit the best influence of the pulpit. We 
should hear no more about long sermons or heavy 
sermons or manufactured sermons; between the 
preacher and the hearer there would be an under- 
standing strong in reason and grateful in feeling, 
resulting in a strenuous endeavour to be wise and 
good and kind. The preacher must get rid of Pope 
and priest out of his own heart if he is to lead the 
religious thought and the religious life of nations. 

The pulpit is not the platform of the lecturer, 
nor is it the sphere of the controversialist ; it is the 
place whence spiritual truth should issue generously 
from heart to heart. By this distinctiveness it re- 
leases itself from the humiliation and the embarrass- 
ment of all kinds and degrees of rivalry. Men 
should get from the Christian pulpit what they can 
get nowhere else in exactly the same way. In 
many other places they can get knowledge, wisdom, 
eloquence, argument, and even ethical appeal ; but 
where else can they have their holiest consciousness 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 97 

so thoroughly illuminated or their deepest necessity 
so earnestly recognised? If the pulpit will persist- 
ently challenge what may be called competition 
with inferior educational ministries, it must abide 
by the arbitrament which it has invoked ; whereas, 
if it will do its own unique work after an apostolic 
model, it will wield an undisputed and incalculable 
influence for good. 

In forecasting the course of English preaching, I 
cannot but feel how much depends upon the train- 
ing and equipment of preachers. First of all, there 
must be evident capacity and enthusiasm on the 
part of students themselves. In the next place, the 
educators of preachers must be men who can in- 
spire students with a noble conception of the possi- 
bilities of preaching as an educational and reform- 
ing instrument. In the third place, the Church it- 
self must realise that it is entrusted with a vital 
message, a sublime and eternal revelation, which it 
did not invent, and which it dare not pervert. Not 
what the preacher conjectures, but what the Spirit 
reveals, must be the substance, as it will certainly 
be the strength, of every pulpit message. 



NOTE XIV. 

If I were asked to name the most memorable 
public occasion in which I have taken part, I should 
name the time when I delivered the eulogy on 
Henry Ward Beecher in the Brooklyn Academy of 
Music. Here is some of it : 

The task which has been assigned me would be 
less of an honour were it less of a burden. It over- 
weights me ; it brings back all my tears ; yet in 
undertaking it I yield to a fascination which is sim- 
ply irresistible, for I feel that my movement towards 
the discharge of this sacred trust is in rhythm with 
those wider movements which work out the mystery 
of special fitness, and finally express themselves in 
the music of proportion and harmony. Were some 
other man to claim this honour, on the ground of 
superior genius, he should have it instantly, with 
my heart's absolute consent ; but no man shall take 
it from me on the plea of larger love. There I 
should resist the impossible plea with apositiveness 
redeemed from perversity by a homage without a 
flaw, and a devotion undistracted by those pedantic 
and fastidious criticisms which, though intended to 
mark the impartiality, and perhaps the superiority, 
of the critic, destroy all that is inspiring in eulogy, 
and all that is magnanimous in justice. To my 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 99 

task I bring an entire love. If love may speak, my 
speech is ready ; if love is genius, I claim to be 
called upon first ; and the fact that each of us 
would claim priority only shows that the sainted 
name which we memorialise to-day works like a 
spell upon our imagination and our reverence, and 
is in the keeping of universal love. To-day our gra- 
cious task is eulogy. By-and-by there may arise 
critics who have every gift but inspiration, and 
every grace but generosity, who will reduce the 
unconscious exaggerations of our homage by the 
recollection of faults which they themselves em- 
body, and by the calculated and artistic enlarge- 
ment of infirmities which will insure their fluency 
by first recalling their experience. To-day we pay 
the toll of love ; to-day we bring an offering of 
flowers, gathered ;from gardens far and near, and 
tended by men to whom flowers are symbols and 
poems ; to-day we do more than all this, for we first 
magnify God in His servant, and account all eulogy 
worthless that is not first religious. Mere eulogy 
is a waxen flower, that m.elts in the hand that 
proudly grasps it; but true eulogy is a living flower, 
rooted alike in earth and sun. Our crowned friend 
was what he was by the grace of God, by the power 
of Christ, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. 
We best praise the human by recognising the Di- 
vine. So if we are not critics, neither are we idola- 
tors. In this instance — the more significant and 
inclusive because of its conspicuousness — our human 
love comes out of our Divine worship, and our Di- 
vine worship, in proportion to its intelligence and 



100 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

purity, enables us to see how much divinity there 
is in ev^ery human life — in the poorest, weakest, 
saddest life, and in the life that throbs and glows 
in the creators of prophecies and poems. I speak 
not inferentially, but with definite personal infor- 
mation, when I say that our ascended friend would 
repel, perhaps with scorn, certainly with indigna- 
tion, every eulogy which God did not first sanction, 
and would love that eulogy best which gratefully 
and reverently magnified the eternal glory of the 
Son of God. 



NOTE XV. 

As an Englishman, I claim, in this labour of love, 
an advantage which no American can yet enjoy. 
Three thousand miles may be said to represent not 
only a distance of locality, but what is almost 
equivalent to a distance of time— that distance so 
essential to true colour, proportion, and perspective 
— the distance which gets rid of the detail, the fric- 
tion, and the tumult which cannot but vex the eyes 
with cross lights, and perplex the judgment with 
the clamour of importunate contentions. Three 
thousand miles away we saw only the outline of a 
noble figure, heard only a clarion tongue, beheld 
only the wizardry of a superb imagination, and 
wondered only at a scope and power of prayer, to- 
gether constituting a unique personality, which, 
with hallowing effect, touched at once our reverence 
and our reason. We saw results, and knew next to 
nothing of processes. We thrilled under the sacred 
symphony, and yet were spared the tuning of the 
instrument. In the criticism, therefore, of a man 
like Mr. Beecher, Christian Englishmen are enabled 
to make history before the time, and to award hon- 
our as if with the serenity of accumulated years ; 
whilst some of the men in his own country, as to 
whose ability and sincerity there cannot be a shadow 
of honest doubt, are yet unable to escape the lim- 



102 MIGHT HAVE BEEX. 

itations of locality and vision. We must stand 
away from the mountain if we would see its mag- 
nitude. Criticism that is attempered by admiring 
memorj' is not bound by the vulgarity of the naked 
eye. With this advantage I undertake my work. 
The Atlantic did for England what time will do 
for America. How much was lost on that ''great 
and wide sea " we cannot tell ; perhaps something 
of exaggeration, something of arbitrariness, some- 
thing of that sudden impulse which often associates 
itself with more or less of v.'hat appears to be de- 
fiance and recklessness ; we cannot tell. It was 
lost at sea : so when the ship touched land, we 
heard only a true preacher, and saw only a brother 
and a friend. Distance of this kind reveals, not 
enlarges, native greatness. The greatness is there 
— there bv birth, there bv Divine decree — awaitins: 
the impartial exposition and vindication of time. 
The solemn centuries — silent priests — anoint and 
enthrone the kings of God. Bunyan is greater to- 
day than ever; the *'' soft raiment" of his dream 
has given him right of way into •* kings' houses." 
IMilton was never so visible in all the outlines of 
spiritual majesty. Shakespeare communes with 
the total world. This is part of the work of time. 
In some Atlantic — of time or space — must men's 
eccentricities and foibles be lost, that their great- 
ness may be without encumbrance or distortion. 
About living men we have opinions : about dead 
men we have judgments, but they must in very 
deed be dead, and dead a long time — so dead as 
not to hear one word of praise ; so dead that what 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 103 

we see is rather a wraith than a palpable body. 
They must be dim, far-away shadows — spectres, 
spirits, coming and going at midnight as at mid- 
day, taking up no space, disputing no ambitions, 
awakening no resentments by active rivalry ; so dead 
that we can get no credit for magnanimity by 
praising them. We believe in deferred gratitude. 
Where we have begrudged bread, we may lavish 
epitaphs. 

There is not a little in the very genius of America 
and its sovereign democracy that confirms and ac- 
counts for the sonship of its most illustrious citi- 
zens : they are not merely residents or inhabitants 
or productive lease-holders ; they are part and par- 
cel of its very substance and destiny ; their unique- 
ness is incommunicable ; of precedent, patented 
usage, and ceremonial status they know nothing; 
they are free, independent, fearless, and if now and 
then too irreverent of the past, it may be that their 
irreverence is simply a recoil from the superstition 
which canonises custom, and makes an idol of an- 
tiquity. America is emphatically the neiv world ; 
in conception, in enterprise, in impulse, in eternal 
hopefulness, it is uniquely and vitally new. Geo- 
graphically, America was long the puzzle of the 
world. From the time when a handful of Arab 
sailors went forth from Portugal in search of it to 
this day, America has had about it somewhat of the 
mystery and fascination of an unsolved problem. 
Politicians and statesmen of the old-world and re- 
actionary type are still alarmed l)y transatlantic 
dash and fire and many-headed democracy. They 



104 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

have long prophesied ruin for America, yet Amer- 
ica lives and thrives, and tells the modern Jere- 
miahs to dry their tears — an exhortation that fails 
of effect because of its bantering and jocund tone. 
Then, too, there is to British Islanders something 
overpowering in the mere size of America — some- 
thing of infinite shadow and infinite weight. Every 
morning Europe awakens to renew its disappoint- 
ment that there is not a revolution in America. You 
have no crown, no king, no State Church, no stand- 
ing army, in the European sense ; yet you live and 
work, and do good and prosper. To European old 
age and propriety this is an outrage. Here you 
have adopted the revolting doctrine that a man 
should go for what he is worth. You care no more 
for the Plantagenets than you care for the plesio- 
saurus, and you often act (not always) as if you 
had no more regard for blue blood than you have 
for a triassic reptile or an entomostraceous king- 
crab. How can any European commend this? 
What does the true American care for tinctured 
shields, field-argents, the lines used in arms — as the 
engrailled, the invected, the crenelle, the nebule, 
the regule, or the dancette? You have no primo- 
geniture and entail, no House of Lords, no titular 
aristocracy ; yet yours are the vital and noble con- 
ditions which make Henry Ward Beechers possible. 
Henry Ward Beecher never could have been in 
Europe what he was in America. You gave him 
scope ; you created opportunities for him ; your 
journals multiplied his influence; your whole people 
applauded and consolidated his independence. We 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 105 

must never forget what the nation did for the man, 
even when we remember most gratefully what the 
man did for the nation. America (it is not too much 
to say) redresses the balance of nations by showing 
that Caesarism is neither necessary to greatness nor 
required for security. A free country grows free 
men, and free men honour the responsibilities of 
liberty. 

Among the superstitions which may be forgiven 
— more ancient even than the College of Au- 
gurs — is the one which reads mysterious writing 
in times and seasons and in circumstances which 
seem at first to have no bearing upon the issue. 
*' Whatltime the star appeared/' is an inquiry which 
even fabled auguries cannot discredit ; it is born of 
the instinct which makes augury possible. I can- 
not but think it was well that Henry Ward Beecher 
was a child of Midsummer, coming amongst men 
when the days were the longest and the whole 
ground was carpeted with flowers. His name might 
have been Midsummer. Out of that season he 
never passed ; it was always June 24 with this child 
of light. The snow that lay upon him was the 
snow of blossoms. He came to earth in summer; 
he went to heaven in spring. Whenever he came 
amongst men, he brought June sunshine and music, 
and made even desponding and surly men feel that 
a fuller and warmer summer — the ^* kingdom of 
heaven " itself — was '' at hand.*' Even so, Father, 
for so it seemed good in Thy sight — and in our 
sight it is beautiful. 



io6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

That little house in Litchfield was not much of a 
nest for such an eaglet. I have seen it only on 
paper, and there certainly the manse is not palatial 
in elevation or in compass. Yet in it there was an 
altar, a Bible, and a secret gate that opened im- 
mediately upon heaven. The fresh air got well 
around it, and the birds sang in the trees which 
waved above its sunny roof. Lyman, his father, 
and Roxana, his mother, were enough to account 
for any genius, for their spiritual quality was purely 
aristocratic, and enough to account for any good- 
ness, for they held large daily commerce with 
heaven. It was a crowded little house when the 
father, the mother, and the ten children w^ere all in 
it, and blithe, too, as well as crowded — a bloodless 
arena where gladiators fought for old theologies 
and new, and then prayed themselves into a holy 
Catholic Church. Opinion divides ; prayer unites. 
Henry soon became a great proprietor. He had 
no land, but he had boundless landscape, every 
inch his own by the right of love. He had great 
friendship amongst trees and birds and squirrels 
and flowers, and soon he came into possession of a 
sacred territory, even the grave of his mother. At 
three years of age that holy land became his, and he 
only dropped the title-deeds in March last, when 
he himself was tenderly laid in the unrocked cradle 
of the grave. To his mother, Henry was three 
years old to the end — quite a babe — wanting no 
larger room than his mother's breast. Over the 
early years we cannot linger. As the panorama 
moves we see him at ten at a private school, which 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 107 

he left after one year, a bad writer, an unpardonable 
speller, and a young thief in Latin; then at a ladies' 
school, the only boy among forty girls, yet submis- 
sive and uncomplaining ; then, for a brief period, at 
Litchfield again, and presently at Boston — that isth- 
mus which, in the imagination of envious persons, 
connects heaven and earth, with great condescen- 
sion towards the latter and some impatience ; then 
we watch him seeking Christ, and finding Him in the 
awakening and fragrant woods one sunny morning 
in May. Only a pen equal to his own could describe 
that vernal vision, for he fluently spoke the native 
language of woods and gardens. To him field- 
maple and adder's-tongue, wood-anemone and wall- 
rue, great bindweed and limestone-polypody, were 
as common as daisy and buttercup and dog-rose are 
to us. Born in June, born again in May, born into 
heaven in spring — how well this child of summer 
missed the freezing winter ! Soon after that never- 
to-be-forgotten sunny morning in May, Henry went 
to Amherst College. From Amherst College to 
Lane Seminary — not cemetery, for Lyman Beecher 
was there ; from Lane to Lawrenceburgh on the 
Ohio River; from Lawrenceburgh to Indiana- 
polis, and after eight years to Plymouth Church. 
So the panorama moves, and so the little one be- 
came a thousand, and the small one a strong nation. 
A singular panorama, too. Look at him ! A 
phrenologico-philosopher at Amherst ; a hcretico- 
theologian at Lane ; a shepherd of twenty souls 
(reckoning nineteen women under this general term) 
at Lawrenceburgh ; a farnicr-prcMchrr at Indiana- 



io8 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

polis; and, finally, a king, whose throne was in 
Plymouth Church, and whose sceptre touched the 
uttermost parts of the earth. What wonder if we 
long to show our pride in him, and our gratitude 
to God for a gift so great ! In one of the last ser- 
mons he preached, Mr. Beecher said: ** When a 
distinguished author or actor upon the scenes of 
life has gone, there is hardly anything men are 
more fond of than to look in upon the secret 
operation of his mind, to discern exactly what his 
genius was." That is part of our task to-day, the 
greater part being to become so enamoured of his 
character as to endeavour to reproduce it according 
to our several ability. 



NOTE XVI. 

I AM not aware that any man ever questioned 
Mr. Beecher's divine right to be a preacher. About 
the vocation of some men there may have been a 
kind of incertitude struggling with charity, a de- 
gree of scepticism mitigated by reluctant hopeful- 
ness ; but in Mr. Beecher's case the verdict was 
unanimous and emphatic. He looked a preacher, 
and not the less so than he looked a man. He 
excited no sentiment by pale sickliness of complex- 
ion. No anxiety was felt about his lungs when 
that sonorous and stormy voice denounced the 
gambler, the sensualist, the pleasure-lover, and the 
drunkard, in those ardent lectures to young men 
dedicated to his father, which elicited the warmest 
commendations from the professors, the judges, the 
pastors, the editors, of America. For fiery elo- 
quence, Mr. Beecher never surpassed those lectures, 
though he may have changed and ennobled his 
style, as Macaulay drew away from the early essay 
on Milton toward the calmer mood of his Addison, 
his Bunyan, and his Goldsmith. It was the com- 
paratively young Beecher that thundered in those 
lectures, and that forewarned the world that no 
evil could protect itself against the lightning of just 
indignation. Mr. Beecher's discourses were unique 
in their intellectual range, though not free from a 
certain monotony of conception and even form. 



no MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Other men have occasional power ; now and again 
they can soar high, and work miracles in thought 
and eloquence ; some invisible moon brings up the 
tide of mental energy ; they make supreme efforts, 
and suffer days after in consequence of unusual 
expenditure of force. They thus amaze themselves 
and amaze others, and are pensively inquired about 
as men who are hardly expected to recover from 
their infinite fatigue. Mr. Beecher was great with- 
out toilj mighty without exhaustion, and so re- 
dundant were his pulpit miracles that they were in 
danger of being treated as commonplaces. Other 
men's sermons were but his introductions. Where 
they said '' Amen," to their own relief and the de- 
light of many, he said ''Firstly"; when they had 
given out all their bread, he began to load the 
tables with intellectual luxuries drawn from every 
field and vineyard accessible to pulpit genius. 
Then the monotony of the mere framework or out- 
line was forgotten in the multitude and vividness 
of the illustrations, which turned abstract truth into 
concrete pictures. Mr. Beecher had a supreme gift 
of language, as was betokened by his planet-like 
eyes — eyes as full as Shakespeare's, as radiant as 
Gladstone's, as expressive as Garrick's. In the use 
of words he was a necromancer, unconsciously so to 
a large extent, for he never knew how well he was 
expressing himself. Yet to limit his eloquence 
to his words were either ignorance or injustice^ 
Fluency in a preacher is often a disease ; in some 
instances it is a crime — always a crime when it 
deposes conscience, and prefers its own windiness 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. in 

to honest painstaking. Mr. Beecher's eloquence 
was like the fluency of the Atlantic — a constant 
motion, a mysterious depth, an infinite caress, or 
an infinite assault. Of our sainted friend it may be 
truly said that his thoughts were greater than his 
language. Every word had its own tint of intel- 
lectual beauty ; every sentence its own freight of 
rich meaning; every sermon its gallery of pictures 
or its galaxy of stars. His words were innumer- 
able, because his thoughts were countless. We 
have had great preachers in England — such as 
Donne, the poet-preacher, of whom Bishop Light- 
foot says : ^' Nothing can be more direct or more 
real than his eager, impetuous eloquence when he 
speaks of God, of redemption, of heaven, and of 
the bountifulness of Divine love ; " such as Isaac 
Barrow, of whom Dr. Wace says : ^' He emerges 
from every sermon a victor over some form of sin 
or error with which he has been in mortal combat " ; 
such as Jeremy Taylor, whom Coleridge calls "the 
most eloquent of divines — if I said of men Cicero 
would forgive me, and Demosthenes nod assent " ; 
such as Chalmers, of whom Canning said, "' The 
Tartan beats us all." We are proud of such men, 
with a pride which is based on reason. But Mr. 
Beecher stood apart from them by the very fact 
that whilst they purchased their pulpit eminence by 
great expenditure of effort, he was evidently free- 
born. He toiled not, nor did he spin, yet the 
ornate pomp and classic unity of others were not to 
be compared with his artless simplicity. Happily 
this panegyric can be tested by the* sermons them- 
selves ; there they stand in thirty volumes. Look 



112 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

where you may, you will find that not even the 
printer, that cruellest extinguisher of pulpit elo- 
quence, has been able to quench their abounding 
vitality. Artistic preachers work literary miracles 
on paper ; they make words run into curious 
moulds, and take the impress of passing eccen- 
tricity. Now the words are plain prose, now they 
fall into irregular measure, now they are almost 
poetical, and again they are almost unintelligible ; 
but everywhere the cunning hand is seen, the 
rasping file is heard, the process of ctoud-making 
is patent, and the allotment of the gilded peb- 
bles that are to play the part of stars is a trick that 
can be followed by the naked eye. Nothing me- 
chanical have I yet discovered in Mr. Beecher*s 
preaching. It is eloquent breathing ; sound of 
hammer or trowel there is none. Call it a perennial 
fountain, call it a growing harvest, call it a brighten- 
ing summer day, and your figure will not be remote 
from the phenomenal reality ; but never liken that 
preaching to any work of art or man's device. It 
were easier to make an Athenian god than to give 
a mechanical model of an inspired sermon. 

It is not too much to say that to many preachers 
Mr. Beecher's method gave a new conception of the 
possibility of preaching. The whole idea of the 
sermon was enlarged. A sermon was no longer an 
analysis of words, a dreary creation and distribution 
of particulars, a pedantic display of learned igno- 
rance, an onslaught (tremendous in feebleness) upon 
absent doubters and dead infidels ; nor was it a 
pious whine, an inoffensive platitude, an infantile 



« 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 113 

homily, or a condiment for delicate souls. It was 
an amazing combination of philosophy, poetry, 
emotion, and human enthusiasm — all centered in 
Christ, and all intended to bring men into right re- 
lations with the Father. The sermon was not an 
object to be gazed at, but a Gospel to be received 
— a Divine Gospel addressed to the sinful, the 
broken-hearted, the lost, the hopeless. It was a 
message from heaven ; a message for all lands, all 
times, all souls ; a message whose moral majesty 
lost nothing on account of its human sympathy, 
but gained the more by reason of its tender tears 
and its eager importunity. In Mr. Beecher's hands 
the sermon never affrighted men, never froze men, 
never repelled men. It was the loveliness of love, 
the very heart of sympathy, the very condescension 
of God. Nor, though so rich in sentiment, was it 
ever weak. Behind all the tears there was a reason 
that had adopted its conclusions in the daylight, a 
philosophy that weighed evidence in scales of right- 
eousness, an intellectual audacity that tried the 
spirits — whether they were of God. It was not 
merely because a bush was on fire that Mr. Beecher 
was awestruck, but as soon as he recognised the 
divinity of the Voice which addressed him he put 
off his shoes, uncovered his head, and listened with 
the reverence of reason and the holy jealousy of 
love. In Mr. Beecher's sentiment there was no 
feebleness. His were the tears of a strong man ; 
his were the sympathies of a lion heart. Those 
who magnify dogma above sentiment regret the 
omission of dogma from his sermons. I have not 
been struck by any such omission. I prefer the 



114 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

living body to the ghastly skeleton. In the living 
body the skeleton, as to its anatomy, is covered, 
but every bone is there — there, not to ,affright, but 
to help all the offices and all the graces of life. 
The anatomist has his duties, but they are not in 
the pulpit. To know God, to love God, to accept 
Christ, to serve Christ, to magnify Christ, to grow 
in grace, in knowledge, and its truth ; to be pure, 
wise, gentle, sympathetic, were the glowing dogmas 
which gave this immortal ministry its strength and 
glory. Yet there were minor lines in the Beecher 
sermon which a complete criticism must recognise. 
The sermon was often alive with the eager spirit of 
the day, and came sometimes near to being a Sun- 
day editorial upon the supreme question of the mo- 
ment. Then it accepted the felicitous assistance 
of humour, and grieved those who know not the 
uses to which irony and satire and banter may be 
put even on Sunday. The humour was often in the 
tone, often in the luminous smile, often in the elo- 
quent eye. It was like the ministry of dew in 
nature : it added something to the rarest beauty, 
and multiplied the sunflash that fell on it like a 
blessing. God Himself made Henry Ward Beecher 
a humourist, gave him a taste for comedy, and en- 
riched him with the grace of playfulness. He 
prayed the better that he laughed so well. His 
tears were the tenderer, because his humour was so 
spontaneous and abundant. He never laughed at 
truth, at virtue, at piety, at poverty, at helplessness. 
He laughed at the fools who undertook to roll back 
the ocean, to grasp the infinite, and to be them- 
selves the God whose existence they denied. 



NOTE XVIL 

But was not this brilliant orator sometimes con- 
sidered to be uncertain in his theological position ? 
Was he not heretical ? unorthodox? irregular? Be- 
fore answering the question I should like to know 
who puts it. Who are the custodians of orthodoxy ? 
Who are the divinely-appointed sentinels of truth? 
I am prepared at once to own that Mr. Beecher's 
theology was impatient of system, form, or what- 
ever looked like finality. He disliked all narrow- 
ness, sectarianism, and heresy-hunting. I will go 
further, and say that we did not always know where 
Mr* Beecher was in his theological thinking. Some 
of us could not follow him when he entered the 
radiant cloud and passed out of our sight, because 
some of us have no wings, and even those in whom 
there are budding pinions can only flutter, never fly. 
The microscope should find no fault with the tel- 
escope, though the one can never do the work of the 
other. Mr. Beecher's theological speculation was 
telescopic. He never returned to us to report that 
the universe is much smaller than he had supposed 
it to be, and that God is infinitely farther away 
than the wings of dream and hope can carry the in- 
quiring soul. He always came back to announce 
tliat we know only in part. He said in effect that 
in the universe of Truth, horizon beyond hori- 



ii6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

zon stretches in unimaginable range and splendour, 
constellation above constellation burns in solemn 
glory, and system within system rolls in silent light, 
compared with whose magnificence all that we 
know of day and summer is but a mitigation of dark- 
ness. How he himself shone like an intellectual 
planet as he told of the largeness of life and growth 
and destiny, and typified in fullest hospitality of 
sympathy the love which educates the universe to- 
wards completeness and liberty ! When he came 
back to announce in his brilliant lectures on Evo- 
lution and Religion that he had become an Evolu- 
tionist, it was with no pride of intellect that he 
made the announcement, but with the delight of a 
child who had seen how many mansions there are 
in his Father's house, and with what infinite sublim- 
ity the economy of the universe is constructed and 
administered. An evolved creation heightened his 
religious wonder, and led him to magnify God in 
loftier and tenderer praise. He liked, perhaps, to 
be ** the first that ever burst into the silent sea" of 
theological or philosophical speculation, not that he 
might boast of his adventure, but that he might tell 
what new mountains he had seen, and what infinite 
corn-land there is yet to be utilised for the soul's 
nourishment. His was the genius of abundance, of 
plentifulness, of inexhaustible riches. For this rea- 
son men of all capacities thronged to his ministry, 
for he had a portion of meat for each, and a masonic 
word which each could understand. Hence his 
pulpit was not a dog-kennel in which pedantic the- 
ology snarled and barked, but a specular tower from 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 117 

which the stars were watched ; not a custom-house 
in which men paid toll and tax, but a home in which 
men rested in a consciousness of Divine security ; 
not a nisi prius court in which creation was broken 
up into details and precedents, but a sanctuary in 
which men could commune with the Infinite Spirit, 
the Eternal Father, the World-redeeming Son. A 
man might deny Mr. Beecher's formal orthodoxy, 
and think that in doing so he was doing God ser. 
vice ; but if any man (I know none such) could 
question Mr. Beecher's orthodoxy of heart, I should 
say of that man that he is a liar, and the truth is 
not in him. 

In this connection we may fitly remember Mr. 
Beecher's power in prayer. His prayers were 
printed, a fact which surprised and annoyed many 
English Christians, who forgot for the moment that 
David's prayers are printed, and Christ's and Paul's 
and that some churches pray only the prayers 
which are already in print. Mr. Beecher's prayers 
have helped the devout life of many. They have 
made many ministers strong. They have brought 
comfort to many a sick chamber. They have en- 
larged the general conception of public worship. 
The '' Imitatio Christi," on which devout souls not 
a few have lived for centuries, is so self-absorbed as 
to be chargeable with distinct spiritual selfishness ; 
not hesitating to say, '' Love to dwell alone with 
thyself," '' Desire communion with none," '* Re- 
move thyself far away from acquaintances and dear 
friends." There is no touch of the cenobite in Mr. 
Beecher's grand, catholic, divine-human communion. 



ii8 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Pascal, in his immortal *' Pensees," has portrayed 
himself. His '' Remains " are the children of his 
latter days — days marked by exquisite suffering and 
by the premature decay of a short and crowded 
life. Mr. Beecher^s prayers were as healthy as his 
life, as mountain-like in their freshness as his intel- 
lectual energy, and as tender as the love w^hich is 
still young and passionate. From all who have 
specially undertaken the culture of the devout life, 
Mr. Beecher's devotional exercises differ in their 
marvellous union of intellectual and spiritual power. 
They belong to no locality, to no sect, to no one 
period of time ; they are universal, experimental, 
pathetic, and rich with all the elements of chastened 
wisdom. Critics who find omissions in his ser- 
mons will find none in his prayers. He ever hears 

** In the low chant of wakeful birds, 
In the deep weltering flood, 
In whispering leaves, the solemn words — 
* God made us all for good.' " 



NOTE XVIII. 

All this we had known about Mr. Beecher 
merely by public and private report, for we had 
never looked upon the man or heard the tones of 
his voice. But our opportunity came : in 1863 Mr. 
Beecher visited England, being then in his fifty-first 
year. It is not my intention to follow him in his 
public exposition of the principles which underlay 
the Civil War — from London to Manchester and 
Glasgow, and Edinburgh and Liverpool — but to fix 
attention for a moment upon one particular occa- 
sion as illustrative of the main features of his Bri- 
tish campaign. I was then located in Manchester, 
and was one of the vice-presidents of the Union 
and Emancipation Society. On Friday, October 9, 
1863, Mr. Beecher addressed a meeting in the Free 
Trade Hall, Manchester. Great was the prepara- 
tion made for that memorable occasion. An organ- 
ised opposition had taken possession of part of the 
hall ; six thousand people crowded the noble audi- 
torium. The only self-possessed man in the seeth- 
ing mass was Mr. Beecher himself. There he 
stood, when his turn came to speak, about five feet 
six or seven inches high, ruddy and of a fair coun- 
tenance, abundant brown hair falling back from a 
head which indicated high reason, fine imagination, 
noble moral power; large solemn eyes that cahnly 



120 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

took in the whole animated occasion, and a contour 
which altogether betokened dominance, capacity, 
and passion well-controlled. It was evident that he 
was going to read his speech, for he unfolded a 
large scroll of manuscript and proceeded to lay it 
upon the desk. '^ Mr. Chairman," said he, and in- 
stantly the hiss and groan of opposition were heard. 
'' Mr. Chairman ; " and again the angry storm 
mingled with the enthusiastic and reverberating 
cheers. In a moment Mr. Beecher's whole aspect 
changed. He was determined to '^ mount the whirl- 
wind and direct the storm,** so, advancing still 
nearer the front of the platform — I see him, I hear 
him now — he exclaimed : ^* My friends, we will have 
an all-night session, but we will be heard ! '* 

That suited the English temper, for it is a splen- 
did temper when downright fair play is in question, 
and the whole audience broke out into a thunder 
of applause, which plainly said, *^ Heard you shall 
be, though the enemy be hurled into the murky 
night." The manuscript was folded up, put into 
the pocket, and for two hours the inspired orator 
spoke, expounded, appealed, fought, and conquered, 
and then sat down in such a storm of cheers as 
probably cannot be heard out of England. When 
Sheridan concluded his immortal speech at the 
trial of Warren Hastings, Edmund Burke said there 
was no department of rhetoric which could not be 
illustrated by splendid quotations from that brill- 
iant harangue. It would be hardly too much to 
say the same of the speeches of Mr. Beecher during 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 121 

his visit to England in 1863. With Pauline astute- 
ness he conciliated his English audiences by exclaim- 
ing : *^ We bring back American sheaves, but the 
seed-corn we got in England — and if in a larger 
sphere, and under circumstances of unobstruction, 
we have reared mightier harvests, every sheaf con- 
tains the grain that has made old England rich for 
a hundred years." ''The same blood is in us; we 
are your children, or the children of your fathers 
and ancestors. . . . Never were mother and daugh- 
ter set forth to do so queenly a thing in the king- 
dom of God's glory as England and America." 

In that eloquent conciliation we saw the man of 
high sagacity. Then again he changed his tone, 
and said : *' We ask no help and no hindrance. If 
you do not send us a man, we do not ask for a man. 
If you do not send us another pound of gunpowder, 
we are able to make our own powder. If you do 
not send us another musket or another cannon, we 
have cannon that can carry five miles already." 

In that calculated banter we saw that he carried 
a sword as well as a scabbard. When, after a 
minute historical statement, he said: "You have 
been pleased to say in this address that I am one of 
the pioneers. No ! I am only one of their eldest 
sons. The Birneys, the Baileys, the Ran kins, the 
Dickeys, the Thoms, of the West ; the Garrisons, 
the Quinceys, the Slades, the Welds, the Stuarts, 
the Tappans, the Goodalls, of the East — these 
were the pioneers," we saw the man who would 
never enjoy an honour at the expense of others, or 



122 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

deprive another man of the honour which was his 
due. When, in a whirlwind of wrath, he exclaimed : 
*' Then came that ever-memorable period when the 
Fugitive Slave Bill was passed. Against that in- 
famy my soul revolted, and these lips protested, 
and I defied the Government to its face, and told 
them, ^ I will execute none of your unrighteous laws ; 
send to me a fugitive who is fleeing from his mas- 
ter, and I will step between him and his pursuer,' ** 
we saw the philanthropist who was neither to be 
bribed nor threatened into silence. And when he 
added, in a tone worthy of the statement, *' Not 
once, nor twice, have my doors been shut between 
oppression and the oppressed ; and the church it- 
self over which I minister has been the unknown 
refuge of many and many a one," we felt that he 
conferred upon Plymouth Church a fame prouder 
than the' renown which had been created for it by 
his own matchless eloquence ; and when, in a tem- 
porary lull in the stormy meeting, he said, ^^You 
are impatient ; and yet God dwelleth in eternity, 
and has an infinite leisure to roll forward the affairs 
of men ; not to suit the hot impatience of those 
who are but children of a day, and cannot wait or 
linger long, but according to the infinite circle on 
which He measures time and events," we felt that 
we were listening to the magician who had so often 
lured us into that sanctuary in which alone true 
judgments can be formed. 

His speeches in other cities were as energetic and 
eloquent, and were as abundantly punctuated with 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 123 

the cries of an angry but impotent opposition, and 
the impression that he everywhere created was that 
he was a patriot and a statesman — not the hireling, 
but the shepherd of his nation. Could his compa- 
triots know what Mr. Beecher did for America in 
that unparalleled campaign, no marble in Carrara 
would be too fine for them to buy and carve, that 
his bust — classical in an artistic eye — might fill the 
proudest niche in the proudest temple of his coun- 
try. Macaulay has described Westminster Abbey 
as the great Temple of Reconciliation ; and such a 
temple America has, if not in fretted vault and long- 
drawn aisle, in the magnanimity in which she buried 
the memory of her strife, and in the sacred liberty 
which guards and leads her growing millions. I 
speak the language of the coldest sobriety when I 
say that in my opinion no nation can be, or has 
been, so frankly magnanimous as the great nation 
of America. When, at Henry Ward Beecher's fun- 
eral, an ex-Confederate General walked side by side 
with a typical African, the stormy past was known 
to have fled for ever away, and all nations seemed 
to have come nearer to the holy Sabbath. 

** When the war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flag is 
furled 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world." 



Mr. Beecher paid a second visit to England in 
1886. On that occasion Mr. .md Mrs. Bccchcr were 



124 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

my guests. His reception was enthusiastic through- 
out Great Britain and Ireland. Wherever he 
preached the largest churches were utterly inade- 
quate to the accommodation of the people, who 
completely blocked all the adjacent approaches. 
Nor was mere admiration elicited. On every hand 
the expressions were inspired by religious apprecia- 
tion and thankfulness, so much so that Mr. Beecher 
himself was simply amazed at the unanimity and 
extent of the recognitions of his ministry by pas- 
tors, students, and preachers of nearly every Chris- 
tian communion. In many a group of ministers 
have I seen Mr. Beecher standing as a father, giving 
and receiving blessing. When he left the churches 
where he had been preaching crowds surged around 
him, accosting him in many grateful words, asking 
to shake hands with him, and on week-days cheering 
him loudly as he drove away. All this meant some- 
thing in slow-moving, conservative England. That 
Mr. Beecher was not received merely by his own 
denomination, or by any clique of friends, will be 
proved when I tell you that he was hospitably enter- 
tained by American residents in London and the 
provinces ; also by the Lord Mayor of London, the 
London Congregational Board, an Association of 
Ministers in Glasgow, the Congregational District 
Board of Liverpool, and by a general meeting of 
ministers in Belfast ; and it will be further proved 
when I tell you that the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone 
invited Mr. Beecher to hospitality, and that amongst 
those who wrote to him, attended his services, wel- 
comed him, or in some other way expressed their 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 125 

interest in him, were Lord Iddesleigh, the Dean of 
Westminster, the Dean of Canterbury, Archdeacon 
Farrar, Canon Wilberforce, Canon Fleming, the 
Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Ellen Terry, Henry Irv- 
ing, Sir John Lubbock, George Jacob Holyoake, 
Professor Tyndall, Herbert Spencer, and innumer- 
able members of Parliament. Of all the meetings, I 
think the assembly of students in the City Temple, 
London, on Friday morning, October 15, 1886, was 
the most remarkable. The rain descended in tor- 
rents, yet nearly 3,000 ministers, professors, stu- 
dents, and visitors thronged the building. College 
classes were suspended ; professors and students 
crowded the same pew, and not a few venerable 
pastors had to be content with camp-stools in the 
aisles of the church. Never was Mr. Beecher more 
elevated in thought, more eloquent in expression, 
more tender in feeling, and never did I see a multi- 
tude of earnest men more thoroughly excited with 
Christian joy than when, in their name and at their 
bidding, I, as chairman of the meeting, offered Mr. 
Beecher the right hand of fellowship in token of 
thankfulness, reverence, and love. You will not 
overlook the fact that all this spontaneous and 
enthusiastic homage was rendered to Mr. Beecher 
by men who had followed him through his whole 
career. They knew him, his ministry, his books, his 
public controversies, his honours, and his sorrows ; 
they knew who had stood by him, who had with- 
drawn from him, who had slandered him, and who 
had trusted him, and, knowing all, they recognised 
in him not only an eloquent speaker and a powerful 



126 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

thinker, but an able minister of the New Testament, 
and a loyal follower of the Son of God. 

Mr. Beecher was a prophet who had honour in 
his own country. That honour culminated in the tri- 
butes paid to his memory ere he was carried to his 
grave. When we heard of the transformation of 
Plymouth Church into a paradise as the dead body 
of the iiiimortal preacher lay there, we said, '' Surely 
this man was a poet, or so lovely a crown would 
not have been fashioned in his honour." When we 
heard the muffled drums and the measured tramp 
of soldiers, and saw the furled and draped banners, 
and watched 500 men march to the house of death, 
we said, " Surely a soldier has fallen — a man, an 
officer, of whom his comrades were proud.'' When 
we heard of the Legislature, the Senate, and the 
Assembly adjourning, we said, ^' Surely this man 
was a politician and a statesman — a citizen of high 
sagacity, a patriot of untainted name." When we 
saw Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Presbyte- 
rians, Baptists, Jews, and Papists hastening to lay 
their flowers on his bier, we said, *' Surely this man 
had burst the unholy thralls of sect, and had en- 
tered into the liberty of Christ." And when we 
saw the coloured clergymen of Brooklyn bowed 
down with sacred grief as they resolved to partici- 
pate in the honours of the memorial, we said, 
" Surely this man was a philanthropist and an 
emancipator of his brethren." So he was. He 
was poet, and soldier, and statesman, and a deliverer 
of bondsmen. He was great in every aspect — great 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 127 

when he spoke in the name of the United Nation at 
Sumter; great when he denounced the sin of 
slavery ; great when he opened his mouth for the 
dumb ; great when he called his mutilated country- 
back to brotherhood and mutual trust ; great in 
prayer ; great in suffering ; great when he pro- 
nounced the matchless eulogy on Grant — always 
great. *^ Know ye not that a prince and a great 
man is fallen in Israel ? ** '^ Howl, fir-tree ; for the 
cedar is fallen ! '* '' My father, my father, the 
chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof ! ** ** I 
pray Thee let a double portion of Thy Spirit be 
upon me ! '* 

Who has not, on returning from long and varied 
travel, found lingering in his memory not the whole 
landscape, with its hills and shores, but little pic- 
tures of beauty which perhaps other eyes have 
never seen in quite the same way. Twenty com- 
panions may have returned from the same tour in 
Alpine lands, yet each has his own story to tell of 
morning glory and evening pomp, of ice-cliff and 
glacier-table, of gorge and torrent ; they admit the 
universal grandeur, but select the individual beauty. 
The Arveiron plunging in a cascade^down the rocks 
is one traveller's heart-memory; another saw the 
moon make love to the Margelin See, and insists that 
to have missed that is to have missed everything ; 
another forgets every sight in the unsullied snow of 
the Jungfrau ; and a fourth declares that his feeling 
was most acute and rapturous, not when he saw the 
iEggischorn or the Corner, but when he stood beside 
the humble cradle of the Danube in the solitudes of 



128 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

the Black Forest. It is precisely the same in the re- 
view of any great life. Every man who knew Mr. 
Beecher fixes his attention upon some incident or 
sermon, or prayer, or speech, which best represents 
the genius or the heart of the man. We make our 
idols, and join ourselves to them with affectionate 
tenacity. Had I an artist at command I could 
order pictures that gold could never buy. I would 
say to the artist : 

'^ Paint Mr. Beecher coming into the ante-room 
of the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in 1863, 
solemn, dignified, like a prophet conscious of his 
* burden * — eloquent in pathetic silence. 

" Paint him as I have seen him at Peekskill — 
Boscobel the blest — seated at the family altar on 
Sunday morning, reading, singing, praying, then 
giving a father^s kiss to every guest — man, woman, 
and child. 

'' Paint him when driving, Jehu-like, a span of 
thunder and lightning, with a fury that would have 
been fruitful of accidents but that the horses knew 
him, and loved his generous mastery. 

*^ Paint him in conversation, with all the April 
variety of his face, constant only in its truthfulness. 
Catch, above all things, the smile — the smile which 
began so far away, so dawn-like, and broadened into 
a summer morning. O painter, let me charge thee 
to seize that spirit-smile. 

" Paint him, if thou canst paint comedy, in many 
a rollicking mood, every look a farce, every tone 
an irony, every attitude a caricature, laughing till 
the crimson tide flushed his shapely head with 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 129 

ominous fulness, yet in all the hilarity not one word 
of bitterness, not one sting of spite. 

'' But, failing all these, I would have thee gather 
thy strength for one supreme effort — nay, a miracle. 
Invoke all the ancestors of art, and bid them help 
thee. Paint the church in which he worked ; let it 
be more a shadow than a geometric form. The 
Sunday Benediction has been pronounced ; the sun 
has long retired ; the white-haired pastor lingers 
that he may have an extra benediction through the 
medium of music ; his eyes are full of tears. Two 
little children unconsciously approach him, and 
stand quite near ; he turns, he sees them, he lays a 
hand on each young head, then he kisses the way- 
farers, and with his hands upon them or around 
them, the three walk away together, one of them 
never to return.*' 

Never to return ! Say of such : ** They shall 
hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither 
shall the sun light on them, nor any heat ; for the 
Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
them, and shall lead them to living fountains of 
water, and God shall wipe away all tears from 
their eyes.*' ^* The ransomed of the Lord shall re- 
turn and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting 
joy upon their heads ; they shall obtain joy and 
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 
Our sainted dead are alive for evermore. Death is 
swallowed up in victory — the grave is conquered — 
and Heaven comes to our thought with friendlier 
familiarity. This is more than sentiment — it is in- 



130 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

spiration. It is strength that can carry the load of 
life ; it is enthusiasm that makes sorrow itself a 
Sacrament. The sainted dead come to us in many 
a holy vision — 

" Not to dwarf us by their stature, 
But to show 
To what bigness we may grow." 

''I heard a voice from Heaven, saying, Write, 
Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." We 
know that such a voice can be from Heaven only, 
for such music slumbers not in the harps of earth. 
We need Resurrection to complete Birth. The 
Resurrection is an instinct as well as a doctrine. 
Birth without Resurrection is most palpable cruelty. 
Then should we say : this God began to build, and 
was not able to finish. We need not argue Immor- 
tality ; it is enough to feel it. Death itself is the 
best teacher of Immortality. It makes Immortality 
possible ; it makes Immortality necessary. When 
death comes upon a man like Henrj- Ward Beecher, 
we cannot believe that it has ended the shining of 
such genius, the ministry^ of such love, the hopeful- 
ness of such aspiration. To-day he is nearer to us 
than ever he was before. 

" He has outsoared the shadow of our night : 
En\w, and calumny, and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall delight 
Can touch him not, and torture not again." 

Yet he is here, a watcher, not a critic ; here to bless, 
not to rebuke ; here to use all the old words of love 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 131 

with larger meanings ; here to give assurance that 
Death is but the door-keeper of Heaven. I will not 
say that Henry Ward Beecher is absent. Do I not 
see him ? Do I not know those lamp-like eyes, 
shining with joy above all words? Can I be mis- 
taken as to that voice whose subdued thunder has 
so often enchained and repaid my attention ? Can 
there be any doubt as to that calm and steadfast 
look ? I will speak to him. No impatient question 
as to Heaven will I ask. I will say : Loved One, 
Husband, Father, Pastor, Friend, HENRY, we will 
soon — quite soon, almost immediately — join thee, 
and so shall be 

FOR EVER WITH THE LORD. 



NOTE XIX. 

In bringing together my reminiscences as a 
writer of books, I drop the potential mood, and 
keep faithfully within the narrow limits of the indi- 
cative. As the author of more than forty volumes, 
I ought to have made some practical notes regarding 
the w^hole craft of authorship and publication. Like 
most boys, I used to write sketches and lampoons 
in as many local papers as would condescend to 
accept them. My first really serious attempt at 
book-making occurred in my twenty-third year. I 
was then an assistant minister in London, and lodg- 
ing verj^ comfortably in rooms which cost me ten 
shillings and sixpence a week. Having a little time 
on my hands, I wrote a few sketches, entitled 
'' Chapters for Young Thinkers." To the best of 
my recollection, they were crowded with instances 
of industry and perseverance on the part of boys — 
mainly Greek and Roman — who had risen to social 
position and influence. What to do with the little 
manuscript when it was finished puzzled me. Of 
course, the publishers of London are all hungering 
and thirsting for new ideas and workable sugges- 
tions, and possibly, if they had known of my manu- 
script, they might have made some encroachment 
upon my obscurity. Failing the approach from 
them, I took the initiative into my own hands. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 133 

With my manuscript carefully secured in my most 
out-of-the-way pocket, I went down to Ludgate Hill, 
and when I came to the entrance of La Belle Sau- 
vage Yard, I gave a boy twopence to take my par- 
cel to the office of Cassell and Co. Having seen 
the boy enter the ofifice door, I took to my heels 
and ran up Fleet Street with almost suspicious rapi- 
dity. Would the great publisher apply for a war- 
rant for my arrest ? Would he in some way or 
other avenge my attack upon his dignity? A few 
days passed, and, to my great surprise and delight, 
I received a letter from Mr. Cassell, accepting my 
** Chapters," and enclosing a cheque for six guineas. 
To my imagination the whole future blazed with 
light. It was now over^vhelmingly clear to me 
that my fortune lay in my quill. Thus we deceive 
ourselves, and thus we are led on from point to 
point in our practical education by the most pleas- 
ing and seductive illusions. 

Settled in my first pastorate, I laid in a stock of 
quills and stationer\^ My eye caught an advertise- 
ment, offering two prizes for the two best essays on 
a given religious subject. I went in for the first 
prize, and got the second ; but this was not discour- 
aging, as more than one hundred and fifty essays 
had been sent in, and the first prize had been 
awarded to a ver>^ distinguished Edinburgh minister. 
When I got the seventy-five pounds safely into my 
hands, no banker in Europe felt more secure against 
the ravages of anxiety. The next effort I made 
was a small book, entitled, " Helps to Truth- 



134 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

seekers/* That little book had a history ot its own 
which I cannot willingly let die. Mr. G. J. Hol- 
yoake, the redoubtable exponent of Secularism, had 
come into my town to deliver lectures upon his 
favourite philosophy of life. I w^as moved to enter 
into a three nights' debate with this really able 
debater. We had the three nights together, face to 
face with a large audience, and from beginning to 
end not one personality was imported into the discus- 
sion. I was charmed with Mr. Holyoake, and I 
believe that he, in his turn, did not form a hostile 
opinion of myself. My part of the debate appeared 
in a little pamphlet entitled ^' Six Chapters on 
Secularism," which afterwards w^as developed into 
" Helps to Truth-seekers." Books for guidance to 
young inquirers are in nearly all cases successful, 
showing that this kind of elementary- literature is 
really needed by troubled minds. This little book, 
which I would not for the world republish to-day, is 
bringing to me even now recognitions and appre- 
ciations which are most encouraging. 

The principal book which next issued from my 
pen was published anonymously. I used to hear it 
discussed and estimated by my brethren and others, 
who had no suspicion that the author was listening 
to them. This book had an immediate sale in quite 
considerable numbers. Its title was '' Ecce Deus." 
No doubt owing to the immense popularity of 
*' Ecce Homo,"' my anonymous book had a special 
opportunity created for it. I had reason to be glad 
that '' Ecce Deus " was published anonymously. 



1 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 135 

for it got a chance of being estimated on its merits. 
This was also the case with my next anonymous 
book, entitled " Springdale Abbey : Extracts from 
the Diaries and Letters of an English Preacher.** 

Nobody could guess who the author was. I had 
the pleasure of observing that it was attributed to 
three or four distinguished authors. Little by little 
the authorship was traced, and one of the most dis- 
tinguished provincial booksellers assured me that 
the moment it was fathered on a Dissenter the cir- 
culation went down. I am unwilling to believe that 
this would be the case now, since every decade 
enlarges and enlightens the judgment even of 
ecclesiastical opponents. " Springdale Abbey " has 
long been out of print. I made a still further attempt 
to secure attention by anonymity in the case of a 
laboured theological work entitled ^^ The Paraclete.'* 
This is out of sight the best work I have ever done in 
the matter of literary composition. A good deal of 
the book I wrote four times over with my own hand. 
The work was issued at twelve shillings, and 1,200 
copies were sold. In this case my anonymity 
brought me good rewards. In one case especially, 
a bitter opponent of mine reviewed the book with^ 
out the slightest idea of its authorship, and com- 
mended it in the strongest terms. To his honour 
be it said that, whein he did get to know who wrote 
the book, he came to me and thanked me for it in 
the most appreciative terms. If that man had seen 
my name on the title-page he never would have 
looked at the exposition, so powerfully may pre- 



136 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

judice affect even Christian minds. I lay the more 
stress upon the fact that large portions of '' The 
Paraclete " were written four times over to call 
attention to the circumstance that my next little 
book, written in three hours, went up to a circu- 
lation of 90,000 copies in a very short time, and 
had the honour of being translated into various 
languages, and reprinted in several countries. How 
are we to account for these things? If real hard 
work went for anything, ''The Paraclete" should 
have taken the lead in circulation ; whereas " Job*s 
Comforters " was written ciirrente calamo, and in a 
small way took the religious world by storm. 
'' Thou canst not tell which shall prosper." In this 
way, as in others, " the wind bloweth where it 
listeth." ^^ Job's Comforters" was published at a 
time when men supposed that science was going to 
do everything. l\Iy question w^as, What will science 
do for a man like the Job of the Bible? I trans- 
ferred the ancient circumstance to a modern in- 
stance, and then I set science to work upon it. 
My Job was impoverished, afflicted, and made 
desolate. ''Then came unto him Huxley, the 
Moleculite; John Stuart, the Millite ; and Tyn- 
dall, the Sadducee ; and they endeavoured to com- 
fort Job out of their scientific books." Professor 
Tyndall himself wrote to me about the satire, and 
in a very kindly and appreciative tone. Mr. Glad- 
stone ordered five-and-twenty copies ; the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury wrote me a special letter of 
thanks ; and I was called upon in many directions 
to read the satire as a lecture. How discouraging 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 137 

it is, in some aspects, to work severely upon a sub- 
ject, and to sell only 1,200 copies of your book; 
then to write in an off-handed manner, and the cir- 
culation to go up to 90,000 ! Is circulation a real 
test of merit ? The man who has had no circulation 
will determine that question almost angrily in the 
negative. 

The "People's Bible" I have published in 
twenty-five octavo volumes. Happily, that work 
got into the hands of men who could commercially 
treat it in an adequate manner. To myself they 
acted most handsomely, so that it is now difficult 
for me to believe that Barabbas was really a pub- 
lisher. Speaking of publishers, I can only say of 
them what is true of every other class of the com- 
munity, namely, that there are good publishers and 
bad ones. It is folly to condemn all publishers, 
and it would be wicked to praise others. Some 
authors are of opinion that a publisher is really not 
necessary, because author and bookseller could 
come face to face without the offices of a middle 
man. A good deal is to be said on both sides. 
For my own part, having tried both methods, I 
believe that an energetic and honourable publisher 
is the author's best friend. I have always gone 
upon the principle that the more the publisher 
made out of my books the better I was satisfied, 
provided that he paid me the sum for which we 
originally agreed. 



The man who comforts me most on all literary 



138 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

matters is Sir Walter Besant. He has a dictum 
which he is never tired of repeating, and which I 
am never tired of hearing — the simple dictum that 
literature is property. On the whole, I believe he 
is right. The only difficulty that some men have 
is that publishers will not adopt the same opinion in 
all cases. An artist, not unknown, has painted at 
least half a hundred pictures, and never sold one. 
He has them all hanging up in his house, and a cat- 
alogue, marked in plain figures, quietly slumbers in 
his desk. According to that catalogue, the artist is 
worth ten thousand pounds ; but, unhappily, the 
money is in the catalogue, not in the bank. Sir 
Walter Besant would not have authors destroy any 
composition, because one day it may acquire a lit- 
erary value. I think most of us have proved this to 
be true. My advice to young authors is to peg 
away with might and main, being more intent upon 
doing good work than upon making an immediate 
income. *' In all labour there is profit." They 
should make up their minds to many disappoint- 
ments. Oh, that horrible postman ! who has not 
seen him bringing the well-known parcel back? 
Who has not peeped out of the front-window and 
squirmed in secret because of a bitter and humiliat- 
ing disappointment ? Never mind ; this lot is com- 
mon to us all. Of course, the only thing w^hich is 
proved by the incident is that the publisher either 
lacks discrimination or a sense of fair play as be- 
tween man and man. I know of no disappointment 
that does not bring with it some subtle, if not always 
substantial consolation. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 139 

It is, of course, the same with the reviewers as 
with the publishers. When they praise us, we 
know by that sign how richly they are endowed 
with genius and power ; when they abuse us, we 
see in a moment that they are malignant and de- 
testable creatures who ought to be swept off the 
face of the earth. 



NOTE XX. 

Anonymous fiction is no paradox in words, and 
is often an extreme convenience in practice. When 
Sir Walter Scott sat behind a newspaper and heard 
wild speculations as to the authorship of ^' Waver- 
ley/* he felt that mystery brings a greatness of its 
own, and runs up the market value of work that is 
felt to be good. For the time being '' Waverley *' 
was a bigger name than Scott, yet in the end Scott 
made '^Waverley" a kind of foot-stool. Mary 
Ann Evans would be about the poorest conceivable 
name to print upon a title-page, because its obscu- 
rity carries with it a bottomless depth of impotence. 
Even now that the world knows all about it, '^ *Adam 
Bede,' by Mary Ann Evans," would severely try the 
fancy of any one on the search for an interesting 
book. It is the same with John Wilson. What 
simpler name can be imagined or invented ? There 
is nothing in it of mountain or flood or heather. 
Yet Dickens said he was '' A tremendous fellow 
to talk to,*' and Edinburgh turned round to look 
after him, and Harriet Martineau said he was her 
ideal of the first Adam. When he called himself 
Christopher North he seemed to feel that the world 
wanted something more than John Wilson — some- 
thing that went more direct to the fancy and the 
hope of life by carrying with it at least a promise of 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 141 

vigour and fresh air. John Wilson might have been 
a brazier in a back street ; Christopher North must 
at least be a brawny Scot, with a tuft of heather 
in his braid bonnet. On the other hand, Dickens 
turned commonplace into a very marked specialty, 
and showed genius even in the retention of his 
lowly name. Dickens was the very name for the 
books he wrote. Full of daily life, full of oddities, 
whims, burlesque, and impossibility, they wanted 
just such a name. 

Love of pseudonymity — surely it could be noth- 
ing else — can alone account for the action of some 
authors. Charlotte Bronte, for example — why call 
herself Currer Bell ? To the great world the one 
title was as anonymous as the other, whilst in 
Bronte there is more piquancy and more flash than 
there can ever be in Bell, notwithstanding its gen- 
eral respectability. There is actually in process 
of issue a series of books called the Pseudonym 
Library. The idea is whimsical, to such an extent 
as to be almost absurd. Who is Lance Falconer, 
Magdalen Brook, Von Degen, John Oliver Hobbes ? 
Are they men, women, or children ? One of the 
books is by Isabel Snow, but she may be a man 
six feet high, with features artificially crimson. 
John Oliver Hobbes may be a blonde with a poet's 
eyes and a voice full of melody. The point of in- 
terest is that all these people think some other name 
better than their own for literary uses and market 
ends. How would this policy act in the Royal 
Academy ? Suppose Sir Frederick Leighton paints 



142 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

under the name of Hobbes, and Alma Tadema as 
Susan Soot? Yet why not? This very thing is 
done on the stage, dramatic and musical, and is 
supposed to be an advance on grand-motherly 
habits. Why not call Pickles Picklesi, and cover 
him with glory by a single vowel ? Why live in 
the obscurity of Muff, when by adding an '' o " you 
can shine in the lustre of unimaginable Italian 
antiquity ? 

This pseudonymity has made good its footing 
even in commerce. At first it looks like a poet's 
trick, or the craze of a false modesty, but it is 
found in hard, prosaic, profit-making trade. A firm 
of three names may consist of one man whose name 
is not one of them. The common appendix " and 
Co/' may mean nothing in the way of responsibility ; 
it may be a mere decoration, without a penny in 
the business. Who can quietly contemplate the 
possibility of this habit establishing itself in the 
Senate or in the Church? Then Henry Dominisco 
may be member for Midlothian, and Augustus 
Claviani may be the Leader of the House. As for 
the Church, she might write her illustrious names 
on scrolls of silk in letters of gold, and even her 
inferior clergy might find in sonorous appellations 
the comfort that is incompatible with their incomes. 
An infinite advantage might thus be gained by 
members of the House of Commons. They could 
change their identity with their politics ; they could 
become opportunists in designation ; they could 
resent the. charge of inconsistency as a butterfly 



I 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 143 

might resent the insinuation that it was once a cat- 
apillar. Whatever may be the ups and downs of 
no-names and false names, it will be generally 
agreed that so long as the freak plays itself out 
without touching integrity of purpose it may fairly 
take its place amongst the minor amusements of the 
world. 



NOTE XXI. 

Why did Nature deny me a verbal memory ? It 
is almost wholly impossible for me to commit any- 
thing to memory. With great pains I have written 
a long lecture on '' Hamlet," but I will not deliver 
it, because I cannot recite the soliloquies, and I am 
too foolishly proud to read them. I get into private 
places and try what I can do with the poet, and this 
is how he comes out : 

" Arms and the man I sing '' (no, that's Virgil !). 
*^ O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, like 
Iser rolling rapidly " (no, that's wrong !). *^ Hype- 
rion to a satyr with a bare bodkin'' (no; tush! it 
works like madness in the brain !). *^ Ere yet the 
salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing 
of the galled eyes, she through an Alpine village 
bore mid snow and ice " (no, that will never do ; 
this is maddening !). '' To be or not to be, neither 
a borrower nor a lender be " (this is more madden- 
ing than ever !). 

This will appear to literal people to be an exag- 
geration, but it is simply a miserable fact. It is the 
same with quotations from the Bible, but, happily, 
I am too cautious to rush into such quotations, so 
I read them, and escape the confusion of the young 
orator who perspiringly and convincingly exclaimed : 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 145 

" And they took up of the fragments that remained 
fourteen baskets full. Whose wife shall she be in 
the resurrection?" Other men have phenomenal 
memories. They can plagiarise without knowing 
it, the peculiarity being as already noted — that they 
can remember every page but the title-page. Their 
memory accounts for their salary. I am not afraid 
to charge a plagiarist to his face : 

" It warms the very sickness in my heart, 
That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, 
Thus diddest thou. " 

But names change. We used to call a man a 
thief ; now we call him a plagiarist or a kleptoma- 
niac. Once we spoke of drunkenness ; now we speak 
of dipsomania. Once we said a man was over head 
and ears in debt ; now we say he is in arrears. Is 
all this tampering with words an improvement ? Is 
the face better for wearing a mask ? Brother, when 
thou stealest a great man's sermon, be not as the 
hypocrites are. 

Some ingenious persons have found a way out of 
the difficulty by dividing preachers into two classes : 
(l) Original thinkers ; and (2) distributors of other 
men's thoughts. I have no objection, provided men 
in the second class distinctly announce themselves 
to be distributors, and especially if they honestly 
tell whose thoughts they are distributing. I think 
it a pity that any preacher should strain his mind 
when he can avail himself of Chalmers, Robertson, 
Beecher, and many others, and honestly tell the 



146 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

people to whose sermons they are listening. I have 
advised young men to give such sermons, say, once 
a month, if they wish to edify and gratify their 
people. 

My long experience goes to the fact that in the 
long-run honest men become respected and trusted, 
and adventurers work out their little course of de- 
ception. The honest man has nothing to fear. At 
first he may be misunderstood ; at last he will be re- 
cognised. It was the same with John the Baptist. 
People said at first : *' He is a reed shaken by the 
wind, or a flash in the pan, or a nine days* wonder." 
Then they said : '' He is a man clothed in fine rai- 
ment, he is feathering his nest, he has an eye on the 
main chance." When these two slanders were worn 
out, the same people said : '' There must be some- 
thing in him ; he wears well. He is a prophet ! " 
Never mind what they say. Keep steadily to honest 
work. Scamp nothing. Never steal a thought. 
Know that the Eye, all-seeing, is on thee, young 
soul, and trust nothing but truth, and be beholden 
to God only for pity. 



NOTE XXIL 

The effect of numbers upon some minds is most 
remarkable. When only one duke attended the 
City Temple he used to be watched for with trem- 
bling expectation. The common people were noth- 
ing heeded; it was the duke that everybody was 
expecting, and, indeed, longing for. What the duke 
had on, how he looked from behind as he sat in his 
pew, how he coughed, how he took certain parts of 
the sermon, what he seemed to give to the collection 
— these were the questions which excited universal 
interest, immensely to the disadvantage of the ser- 
mon. But when two more dukes came, and then 
two more, and more still, until the number got up to 
fourteen dukes, with duchesses and dukettes, fifty- 
six in all, they were treated with something like in- 
difference, and, indeed, one red-handed Radical 
treated the whole of them with contempt, and the 
very doorkeepers hustled them into their places as 
if they were only common mud, like the minister 
himself. 

The question has often occurred to me whether a 
duke can ever really understand Jesus of Nazareth. 
I don't see how he can. Does not a duke travel to 
whatever heaven he has in view, just as he would 
travel from London to Edinburgh — that is, by a 
kind of authorised time-table ? Who would think 
of travelling by a railway of his own making? Who 



148 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

would pray on his own responsibility ? What duke 
would think of approaching the Eternal without a 
carefully written address authorised to be read in 
churches? A duke is nothing if not orderly. The 
law is written for him ; why not the prayer ? We 
don't make our own hymns ; why should we make 
our own prayers and thanksgivings? The duke 
would seem to have reason on his side, and analogy, 
and good history ; besides, it would be impious to 
think of a duke being enthusiastic about anything. 
It would rufifle him. It would be unlike all the 
rest of his sedate and uncrumpled life. Who could 
imagine a duke taking part in the '^ Hallelujah 
Chorus? " The one thing most duke-hated is sen- 
sationalism. When the psalmist called on people 
to shout, to praise God with a loud noise, and to 
laud Him with cymbals, and high-sounding cymbals, 
he was, of course, referring to the riff-rafT in the 
gallery. No judicious commentator will deny that. 

The great object of a duke in going to church is 
to get it over. A sermon longer than ten minutes 
is, or should be, an indictable offence, and truly the 
duke is not far wrong under certain circumstances. 
Felix cut the Apostle short. No Felix can hold 
out more than a certain time. Why should he? 
Felix has his recreations at home. 

Far be it from me to judge dukes. There are 
bad and good in all classes. I believe it is possible 
for a lamp-lighter to be no better than he should 
be. Perhaps a millionaire may pray, but what has 
he to pray for? 

A man is not necessarily a saint because he works 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 149 

in the dockyards, nor is a man necessarily going to 
the devil because he has a bank in Lombard Street. 
No doubt money does work wonders in a man's 
constitution. I have known a mechanic rise from 
point to point in money-making until he could not 
attend evening service for fear of getting cold. His 
balance at the bank made him sensitive to the 
evening air. When he had twenty shillings a week 
no draught could get at him. It was different when 
he had twenty pounds a week. Of course it was. 
We must not condemn the man ; it might have 
been the same with any of us. 

We don't know what dukes have to put up with. 
We should be considerate one of another. The 
greatest will be gentlest. 



Her Majesty was good enough to send for me to 
Windsor last week, just to talk matters over with- 
out committing either of us to anything. The con- 
versation was "without prejudice" and quite frank. 

'^ Now," said her Majesty, '' how would you shape 
things if you had your own way ? " 

I was shattered and broken up into little pieces. 

"I suppose," her Majesty continued, "you have 
a little card up your sleeve ? " 

I stammered "Yes," and coloured into quite a 
notable complexion. 

" First of all, your Majesty," I said, " I would al- 
ways have the Prime Minister in the House of 
Commons. When either Salisbury or Rosebery is 
premier, he should sit, and speak, and vote as a 
commoner." 



150 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

** I would limit the House of Commons to one 
hundred members, say two a county, and twenty or 
so for Universities, financial corporations and in- 
dustrial boards/* 

*^Well?" 

'^ If I retained the bishops, I would put them in 
the House of Commons. If the Church is national, 
the bishops should be in the national house — fathers 
of the people, not lords of the realm.** 

^^Well?" 

** I would have county parliaments, not to legis- 
late, but to formulate opinion upon public ques- 
tions, and to advise the House of Commons. They 
would be educative, disciplinary, and patriotic." 

'' Well ? " 

" I would try these suggestions before going fur- 
ther, but if I might add another point, quite inci- 
dentally, it would be that I would hang any man 
who spoke more than half an hour at once, except 
in introducing the Budget or some bill bearing upon 
high policy, and I would award a royal honour to 
any man who held his tongue for two sessions." 

Her Majesty did not seem to be at all overborne 
by my presence. She maintained her composure 
wonderfully, and, indeed, she said she was glad to 
have met a Dissenter, and to find that he was a 
fairly well-dressed human being. 

*' Might have been — 
I dunno'. 
Jest so ; might ha' been. 
Then, agin " 



NOTE XXIII. 

I HAVE referred to John Oliver Hobbes. I ex- 
pected from the name only to see a man six feet 
high, strongly coloured, and gleamingly bald. I 
was sure his staff would be like a weaver's beam, 
and his voice a grunt with hardly an educated tone 
in its puffy blurr. I never liked the name of 
Hobbes. It had always a taint of infidelity, and an 
evil look of dark and unexplained designs. But 
one gets used to things — some people, oddly put 
together, get used even to tobacco and to evening 
newspapers. So I have got used to Hobbes, and 
do not now mind him much in the way of offence. 
I do not know how John Oliver likes Hobbes, but 
I feel as if he did not value the painful association. 
It looks as if he had fallen in the world, or had to 
carry a parcel that looked uncanny. Between 
Oliver and Hobbes there is the very same difference 
that there is between going up a ladder and com- 
ing down. 

But, to my infinite amazement, my John Oliver 
Hobbes turned out to be a woman. That was mys- 
tery on mystery. She was no John at all, and no 
Oliver, and no Hobbes! What a lying world it is, 
when we are out of it — quite a misleading and mock- 



152 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

ing world, all paint and sawdust and orange-peel, 
and taxes ! I don't know that I am exactly right 
in calling John Oliver Hobbes a woman, for she is 
only a girl — to me a girl, for I knew her when she 
could hardly walk, yet even then her eyes, being 
rightly interpreted, were quietly and brightly look- 
ing round for epigrams, and for faces that could be 
cut on cherry-stones. Pearl Richards was a child 
of character ; wise up to the height of silence ; too 
innocent to be really guiltless, for no sooner was a 
man's back turned than she took off his oddities 
with infinite accuracy, especially if that man hap- 
pened to be a woman. She caught a giggle when 
people thought she was looking a mile away, and re- 
peated atone with the faithfulness of an echo. Yet 
who could look more guileless? She could turn 
you into an epigram in the act of asking you to 
have another knob of sugar in your tea, and in 
your answer she would see your character and fore- 
cast your doom. She has a dreadful power of 
epigram. She can fit you into six words, and do it 
so neatly that you cannot get out again. As for 
personification, she is simply a creator, and she 
does it so fast as to make the first chapter of 
Genesis quite slow. This genial author works by 
capital letters, and fills galleries with the new-made 
vitalities. She writes reality with a capital '' R,'* 
and you have no idea how that affects the simple 
little word ; and prudence with a capital '' P," and 
utility with a capital '^ U,'* and, presto! these 
words, or others like them, become personalities 
and forces. Without being an absolutely novel 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 153 

way (for Carlyle knew it well), it has quite a strong 
effect as used by this pictorial writer. 



How did she begin the world of letters ? I can 
tell you. She has always been a devotee of the 
family ink-horn, and early she went in even for 
printers* ink. Probably I was the first editor who 
received and printed the writings of Pearl Richards. 
Do you wonder, then, that I feel upon my face a 
sheen of reflected glory ? Can you wonder that I 
prefer Pearl Richards as a name to John Oliver 
Hobbes, especially as some persons persist in call- 
ing it 'Obbes ? I claim your vote in favour of my 
preference. But let us be methodical in our his- 
tory, and join the budding Hobbes at the tender 
age of seven. At that age she was walking from 
the City Temple with her aunt, and they came 
upon a dead cat upon the sidewalk. 

Aunt: "There, I wish all the cats in London 
were lying just as dead as that one.*' 

Seven-year-old Niece: '^That's not a very kind 
speech, Aunt Anna. Some day you'll be lying 
dead, and people will be saying, ' I wish every one 
like her was just lying as dead as she is.' Now, if 
a dog or a cat were to come along they would feel 
sorry; but that just shows that there's compensa- 
tion in all things.'* 

There you have reproof, forecast, sympathy, and 
philosophy in one imperious sentence. 

Now we advance a step, and see John Oliver 



154 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Hobbes in her first published essay. Here is the 
article just as I printed it : 

^^LosT, A Dog. 

** I WONDER if any little boys and girls that 
read the Fountain ever lost a dog. I have ; 
and if you like I will tell you my experience on 
that subject. First of all, Sandy (the dog) is a 
very valuable pug. He has all the points, 
which consist of purple eyes, black ears, four 
moles, curly tail, and cream-coloured fur. Now, 
Sandy, like all other dogs (and children, too), 
was very fond of having some one to play with, 
and having no companions, felt very lonely : 
so on mornings when Kate (our housemaid) 
left the drawing-room windows open, he would 
seize his opportunity and jump out of the 
window, run down the path, and out of the 
gate into the street, but would always come 
back to breakfast. Now, one particular morn- 
ing he did not come back, but we all supposed 
he had found a particularly interesting dog and 
was hunting cats, and, like King Herod's sol- 
diers, seizing their very unfortunate kittens 
(only Herod's wicked soldiers killed little chil- 
dren). When I came home from school I 
missed Sandy's usual bark of welcome, and in- 
stantly raised an alarm — first to the crossing- 
sweeper, then to the policeman (our own 
* Bobby '), the tradespeoples' lads, and, lastly, 
to the police-station, but no one had seen or 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 155 

heard of Sandy. After two days of worrying 
we printed ' Dog Lost ' in the Times. This 
seemed of no use — when just as we were going 
to give up, an extremely doggy-looking man 
presented himself at the gate. Mamma, who 
was sitting at the window, said instantly, * That 
man has come about the dog ! ' She could 
see pugs, black and skye terriers, pointers, and 
bulldogs in every motion of his body as he 
came up the walk. We all went to the door, 
and the man said, * As *e know'd a party as *ad 
got the dorg h'off another party 'ou 'ad pay*d 
fifty bobs for *im, and hif we paid *im back the 
fifty bobs *e would let us ave *im.* Mamma 
said, * Certainly; bring me the dog and you 
shall have the fifty shillings ; ' but he said, ' I 
can't do that, mum ; some one must go with 
me and see the party, and hidentify the dorg.' 
Of course none of the servants would go with 
* sich a vagabont,' and we didn't blame them. 
So mamma sent him to papa's ofifice, and he 
told him the same tale. Papa told him to 
bring the dog, and get his money— but no, 
some one must go with him, which papa finally 
consented to do, and drove down to the Hol- 
born Viaduct, as the man had said, where he 
should meet * the party.' There, imagine 
papa's surprise when reaching the Viaduct, to 
be told that he must go to Bunhill Row% in 
Finsbury. So off they went, till the dog-man 

stopped at a public-house, called , and 

asked papa to go inside and have a drop, while 



156 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

'e went to fetch ' the party ^ who would be 
back in five minutes. Papa said he would wait 
outside, and he truly did wait for one hour and 
a half, but no man, ' party,' or dog appeared. 
Then papa thought it was getting ' played out ' 
— hailed the first cab and came home — dis- 
gusted. The only reason we could make out 
why the man didn't return was, he thought he 
was being followed, and would be put in charge 
as soon as he returned with the dog, which 
fancy was partly true, for a friend of ours did 
follow, but only for the purpose of assistance 
in case papa got into trouble with the man, for 
he looked such a rogue. Well, there was an- 
other week of waiting, and yet no news of 
Sandy. Another advertisement was put in, in 
answer to which another dog-man came and 
said he would really give us the dog if we 
promised not to put him in charge, and would 
pay the fifty shillings. So mamma started him 
off to the office ; again the story was told to 
papa, who called a four-wheeler, told the dog- 
man to mount the box with cabby, and with a 
young man from the office inside with our ser- 
vant Lizzie, told the cabby to drive wherever 
the man said and not lose sight of him, and to 
pay the money if the dog was produced. The 
journey was successful, for an hour afterwards 
the cab drove up with — yes — could it be ! — 
Sandy ? He nearly knocked us all down he was 
so glad to get home, and after he had barked a 
little out of the windows, mamma took him 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 157 

down stairs by the back of his neck and plunged 
him into a tub of warm water and soap, and 
gave him a good scrubbing. When the old gar- 
dener saw him, he said, ' Mem, I can see 'ees a 
skeleton, 'e be so thin,' an now as he lies so 
still I can see no fat on him at all, and he looks 
only a remnant of his former sleek, fat, and glo- 
rious lordship, Sandy. I think missing his nice 
home for two weeks taught him a sad, but 
good lesson, and I don't believe he will ever go 
off alone again from the old gate of Sandy 
Hook. 

" Pearl Richards, 10 years.'* 

There we leave the child. The growing woman 
still lived near the ink-horn, and sent sketches, criti- 
cisms, and various articles to the Society papers. 
Then came '' Some Emotions and a Moral," her 
first book. She came, she saw, she conquered, just 
as Caesar did, but with other weapons. Then 
came *'A Study in Temptations," and then ''A 
Bundle of Life," and more and more have come, 
and are coming. For John Oliver Hobbes must 
work. She likes it, welcomes it, takes her holiday 
and her recreation in doing it. If the work has any 
fault, it is that it is faultless. It allows nothing for 
human weakness. There is no scamping when 
John ** puts out to sea." I call her rather cruel 
and pitiless herein, for she pricks the reader forward 
when forty winks might do him good. Nothing is 
cut to waste. I am not sorry that I hit upon that 
word "cut," for it gives me the right idea of the 



158 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

whole scheme of her work. It is not painting ; it is 
sculpture. Now I think of it, that is exactly what 
it is. Everything is clear-cut, sharp, pointed, and 
cleanly tooled. Her books are galleries of sculp- 
ture, men*s heads and women's heads in dozens, not 
one grinning, but most of them with a laugh on the 
lips if you have eyes to see it. In John Oliver 
Hobbes' books there are no tufts of grass, no fes- 
toons of roses, no purling gurgling brooks. I be- 
lieve that in one of them somebody does walk across 
a lawn, but that is the only bit of green grass 
that I can clearly remember. All the characters 
are tersely eloquent ; even the least sparkling are 
the occasion of sparkle in others. They all seem 
to talk with their teeth, and then to carry on a 
lively game of biting. A man no sooner opens his 
mouth than some woman (always a woman) nips his 
head off. The epigram guillotine flashes down, and 
the head is in the basket. It is all over before you 
think it has begun. Then, is there no fun in the 
books? Oh yes. But it is of its own sort. You 
know how you laughed when the old woman fell 
out of the omnibus, and all her sandwiches and a 
small flask rolled in the mud ? Now, other people 
could have seen in the event something to be sorry 
for ; but you laughed, and you laughed again when 
you got home and mentioned the matter at your 
own fireside. John Oliver Hobbes makes no at- 
tempt at poetry. Opal dawns and starry eves are 
not to be found ; rainbows and haze full of cherubs 
are not on the premises. Here the pale moon 
never kisses the green wave, and, in fact, there 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 159 

might be no moon at all for any use Hobbes makes 
of it, although there is a Cynthia in " Some Emo- 
tions and a Moral/* 

In "A Study in Temptations" the brilliant 
novelist wrote this in her own microscopic cali- 
graphy : 

'*To my first reviewer, Dr. Joseph Parker, 
the first also to encourage my childish attempts 
at literary composition, the first to prize work 
which was only remarkable for its gigantic in- 
tention. 

"J. o. h;' 

There ! 



NOTE XXIV. 

There is a growing conviction in some important 
quarters that the Christian pulpit is allowing itself 
to be enfeebled by the contemptuous criticism of a 
few modern writers. These writers, be it remem- 
bered, never come near the pulpit, and never accord 
it any recognition but a sneer, yet their malign in- 
fluence is clearly traceable in not a little of the 
Christian ministration of the day. Preachers who 
were wont, in the intensity, and even passion, of 
their early faith, to be most clear and positive in 
their doctrinal utterances, are now apt to hesitate 
in some parts of their speech, lest the ghost of an 
absent enemy should be offended. The conse- 
quence is that such preachers are strongly tempted 
to address an imaginary audience, to the spiri- 
tual neglect of honest men who expect to hear 
from them the living and redeeming Word of God. 
A young preacher especially easily leads himself 
to suppose that he must preach to *^the day,'' 
but, unfortunately for his theory, '' the day " never 
comes to hear him, and his controversial gifts are, 
though unintentionally, most ingeniously and suc- 
cessfully employed in vexing and disappointing 
anxious and devout listeners. That some people 
may be pleased with the kind of preaching which is 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. i6i 

eloquently addressed to " the day *' is far from im- 
probable, seeing that it never stings the conscience, 
and never condescends to enter the region of moral 
discipline. It is simply a sublime fight in the air, 
in the exciting progress of which the combatants 
fiercely strike at nothing, and hit it with magnifi- 
cent precision. 

There is neither irony nor sarcasm in the state- 
ment that in listening to some preachers, deservedly 
conspicuous and influential, one receives the im- 
pression that there is an eager though invisible 
auditory before them, whose one object is to give 
them the lie at the end of every sentence, and to 
convict them of lunacy in the construction of every 
argument. The fact is, that in such cases the 
preacher is rather replying to the books which he 
has been reading during the week than giving him- 
self to the actual experience which is represented 
by his congregation. Instead of this, we plead to 
have the Gospel preached with intelligence and 
pathos, as the answer of God to the want of the 
world, assured that such preaching will be followed, 
as it will undoubtedly be inspired, by the gracious 
energy of the Holy Ghost. We are far from deny- 
ing that notice should be paid to current criticism 
upon Christian doctrine, but quite as far from as- 
senting that such notice should be paid from the 
pulpit. Written attacks are best met by written 
defences, and even were it not so from a literary 
point of view, it is certainly more honourable to 
meet an enemy on his own ground than to fire 
upon him from the security of a privileged position. 



i62 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

That the Gospel is a message to humanity rather 
than to any special set of men, will be unanimously 
agreed ; then, a fortiori, it should be addressed to 
a universal want rather than to individual scepti- 
cisms or sectional eccentricities. The Christian 
sanctuary is not a high school for the education of 
a few pupils, but a free school for the instruction 
of the whole world. The rich and poor meet to- 
gether, the master and servant, the strong and the 
weak, the old man and the little child, all assemble 
there, and upon them all a rich rain of a common 
blessing should descend. Loss of sympathy is loss 
of power. If as preachers we become separated 
from the common mass by betaking ourselves to 
some specialty of our vocation, as, for example, the 
refutation of sceptics who never listen to us, and 
the destruction of theories of whose very existence 
nine-tenths of our hearers are totally unaware, we 
shall cut ourselves off from those currents of sym- 
pathy upon whose right use so much of ministerial 
usefulness depends. Preachers who in the proper 
use of the term are truly successful preach to man 
rather than to men, so much so that, though here 
and there a sense of dissatisfaction may inflict indi- 
vidual minds, there is, on the whole, a happy con- 
sciousness that Divine truth has been offered for 
the salvation and nourishment of the soul. In 
morals as well as in physics, men soon find out the 
difference between a candle and the sun. The 
pedantic debater is but a street-lamp, useful enough 
in his place ; but the genuine Christian preacher, 
whose sympathies are as broad as his theology, is 



« 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 163 

as the sun shedding a brilliant and impartial glory 
upon human life. 

One of the prime conditions of a spiritually in- 
fluential ministry is a methodical presentation of 
Christian history and dogma. Want of method is 
want of force. Every preacher is bound to tell 
his hearers in an orderly and complete manner 
what it is that he really wishes them to believe. 
For the stimulus of his best powers let him sup- 
pose himself to be addressed by his hearers in some 
such words as these : " We have gathered around 
you as men who desire above all things to know 
the truth ; we meet you with an honest disposition 
and purpose. Tell us, then, patiently and sympa- 
thetically what it is that you wish us to receive as 
the truth of God.** The preacher who accepts this 
noble challenge will do a work of infinite conse- 
quence, whose results will abide when pulpit-trifling 
has gone to its deserved oblivion. 

It is a mistake to suppose that ordinary congre- 
gations cannot hold their attention to a consecutive 
exposition of Christian faith. The preacher may, 
indeed, have the unhappy art of mystification, in 
which case his incapacity must not be excused at 
the expense of his hearers ; but where there is even 
average ability to interest a congregation, that 
ability will find itself exercised to the highest ad- 
vantage in following an orderly and ever-expanding 
course. The wise teacher will instinctively guard 
against such scholastic technicalities and refine- 



II 



i64 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

merits as will embarrass not only undisciplined, but 
over-burdened and over-driven men ; he will point 
out the sunny fields of Christian instruction and 
consolation with the cordial delight of a shepherd 
rather than with the critical rigour of a botanist, 
and so will conceal his genius by the beautiful 
covering of his grace. We preach most definitely 
and profitably to '*the day*' by preaching the 
truths which belong to unlimited time ; any other 
course will elevate accidents into principles, and 
invest with exaggerated importance the abortive 
assaults which are made upon the Christian king- 
dom. The pulpit turned into a medium for the 
advertisement of heretical books is about as flagrant 
a violation of public stewardship as can possibly 
disgrace any messenger who bears the name of the 
Son of God. 



NOTE XXV. 

( Written long before Mr, Irving was knighted:) 

The innumerable reviews of Mr. Irving by liter- 
ary and artistic experts have left room enough for 
an amateur estimate by a man who is accustomed 
to regard human life mainly from a religious stand- 
point. A complete review of the stage by the 
pulpit could hardly be the work of a single pen ; 
for my own part, therefore, I can only make a very 
small contribution to such a review by indicating a 
few points which have occurred to me in the study 
of one particular actor. At once, however, the 
question arises : Is Mr. Irving a man who can be 
thus summarily characterised ? In a dramatic sense, 
are there not many Mr. Irvings ? When a man can 
act " The Two Roses " and " The Dead Heart '' 
with equal effect ; when he can at will be as vulgar 
as Robert Macaire or as dignified as Cardinal Wol- 
sey ; when he can be either as young as Hamlet or 
as old as Lear, the inquiry as to his plurality be- 
comes natural and pertinent. For my part, I rank 
Mr. Irving the comedian above Mr. Irving the tra- 
gedian, just as I rank Nature above Art. Each 
may be highest in its own way, yet the one may 
have a charm which the other cannot boast. Mr. 
Irving's tragedy sometimes requires working-up, 
but his comedy is spontaneous and immediate. 



i66 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

The needful working-up of tragedy is no fault of 
the actor. Tragedy should hardly ever begin at 
once ; the murder may come too soon. Premature 
rage is followed by untimely laughter. Digby 
Grant begins at once, and can be his best self in the 
ver}' first sentence ; but Macbeth must move to- 
wards his passion by finely-graded ascents. In 'Mr. 
Irving's exquisite representation. Macbeth's anxie- 
ties and perturbations, his rapid alternations of cour- 
age and cowardice, make delicate but obvious record 
of themselves in deepening the grey of his hair and 
ploughing more deeply the lines of his face. A 
comedy may be judged scene by scene, almost sen- 
tence by sentence ; but a tragedy can be truly es- 
timated only when viewed in final perspective. 

Judged by this test, I have no hesitation in re- 
garding Mr. Ir\'ing's King Lear as the finest creation 
of his genius. This is an instance in which the actor 
creates the piece. Shakespeare is, as a poet and 
playwright, at his worst in ''King Lear"; yet his 
accessories are wonderful in variety and suggestive- 
ness. Only Shakespeare could have created the 
heath, and have so ordered the old King's passion 
as to make his madness part of the very thunder and 
lightning. That was Shakespeare's magnificent 
conception, and Mr. Irving's rendering is worthy of 
its tempestuous grandeur. How to talk up to the 
storm ; how to pierce the tumult with the cries of 
human distress ; how to escape the ridiculous and 
the incongruous; how to be a king on the desolate 
heath, and to make the royalty gleam through the 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 167 

angry darkness, were the problems, and Mr. Irving 
solved them one and all, even with redundance of 
faculty and skill. At the end of the Heath scene 
the man is more remembered than the storm. It has 
been objected that in the first scene Mr. Irving*s 
Lear is too old and feeble. I further venture to 
think that the King's age and the King's imbecility 
have both been accurately appreciated. A man at 
eighty, a man athirst for flattery, a man who would 
pay a kingdom in exchange for adulation, must 
have outlived all that is best and strongest in hu- 
man nature. He comes upon the stage as a wreck. 
His vanity has eaten up his sagacity, so that she, 
Goneril or Regan, who can flatter most, can lie 
most, and can play the devil best, shall fare most 
lavishly at his hands. Is it not well partly to excuse 
these excesses of self-valuation by such mitigations 
as can be found in the infirmity of old age? Even 
in an elderly man they would have been treated 
with contempt ; they could only be endured in one 
whose eighty years had been doubled by the hard- 
ness of his life lot. 

In '' Henry VIII." Mr. Irving had little to do. 
In that play the labour and the glory fell upon an- 
other, to the infinite delight of the public. In 
" Lear" Mr. Irving has everything to do ; from be- 
ginning to end there is only one character. Even 
the fascinating Cordelia is but a silver cloud on the 
far horizon. '^ The King is coming ! " is the cry of 
the play. His madness is more, as to display and 
effect, than the sense of all the others. The scene 
is stiff and cold until his wild hair is observed to 



i68 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

approach the front, and then the whole spectacle is 
alight with feeling and purpose. The other actors 
are not to blame that, to a large extent, they are 
thrown into the shade ; indeed, they are to be 
warmly congratulated upon their self-suppression 
and their passive sympathy. It is a hard task to 
play the part of two heartless and treacherous 
daughters, and a pitiful fate to have to represent the 
villainy of Edmund, yet all this was admirably 
done. It cannot be an easy thing to come forward 
to play the villain well, for the better the dramatic 
villain is played, the more is the actor compelled to 
recognise in his execration the exact degree of his 
success. So admirably can Mr. Irving himself play 
the villain that it is difficult to believe that any 
godparents ever, on his unconscious behalf, re- 
nounced the pomps and vanities of this wicked 
world. 

In many minor parts — or along the subsidiary 
lines of great parts — Mr. Irving's subtlest power 
comes into effective play. Who, for example, can 
be more gentle or more graceful with a little child? 
Who could hug the '* fool " more fondly than old 
King Lear ? Then recall his wonderful recognitions 
of old friends. When, in " The Dead Heart," he 
is liberated from the Bastille, how old times slowly 
but surely dawn into consciousness, and how quickly 
the dawn hastens into the noon-tide of the tender- 
est fellowship and highest festival of joy ! It is 
verily a resurrection. After eighteen years' entomb- 
ment this political Lazarus comes forth to liberty, 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 169 

to leadership, to dominance. In *' Lear '* there are 
two wonderful instances of recognition — the recog- 
nition of Gloster and of Cordelia. Gloster is blind 
and bandaged. Cordelia has been long out of sight 
— if not in actual days, yet in depth of feeling — and 
the King himself is demented. Little by little 
things shape themselves in the memory and fancy 
of the King. There is something confusedly fa- 
miliar in the voice of Gloster, which tone by tone 
settles into recognition. In the case of Cordelia the 
father gradually subdues the King, and instinct 
takes the place of reason ; then, in a fine strain, 
comes the identification : 

*' Do not laugh at me, 
For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
To be my child Cordelia." 

The utterance of these words by Mr. Irving is sim- 
ply thrilling. The tones, the glances, the approach, 
the embrace, lift up the words into new light, keen 
and tender as the brightness of a summer morning. 
The words themselves are by no means striking — 
are, indeed, the merest commonplace, but uttered 
with the natural pathos of a consummate actor, 
they carry the play to its most subduing climax. 
The humanity and the genius satisfy expectation 
in its most eager and jealous temper. Failure at 
that point would have ruined the play. Which was 
better, Lear or Cordelia, in that critical action ? 
We must first settle which is better — the star of 
morning or the morning-star? 



I/O MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

As I opened this brief review with a reference to 
the religious standpoint, it may be well now to ask 
how the Church is to regard the stage as an educa- 
tional institution. The stage cannot be put down. 
It responds to an instinct which is ineradicable, and 
which need not be ignoble. The parables of the 
New Testament are the sublimest recognition of 
that instinct. The drama is older than the theatre. 
Much of the greatest preaching has been dramatic, by 
which I mean that it has touched human life through 
the medium of story and parable, coloured and 
toned by a living fancy. Sometimes, too truly, the 
dramatic in preaching has degenerated into impos- 
sible anecdotes, most of them originating in the 
Far West of America, yet even such anecdotes testify 
to the overpowering force of the dramatic instincts 
when limited to their most vulgar conditions. My 
submission is that a properly-conducted stage might 
be the most powerful ally of the pulpit. I advance 
upon this submission, and contend that the function 
of the preacher is infinitely superior to the function 
of the actor. Whatever the preacher has to say 
that is distinctive he can trace to what he believes 
to be a Divine and authoritative origin. I hold the 
great preacher to be a spiritual medium. In his 
next evolution he will simply tell the people what- 
ever may have been given him in the same hour to 
say. This does not mean that indolence will super- 
sede industry. Through the indolent man God 
sends no messages. The true prophet will always 
be preparing himself. By learning, by meditation, 
by self-discipline, the true prophet will prepare his 



« 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 171 

heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and 
the glory of heaven will be as a fire on the altar of 
the honest heart. Art preachers we have had in 
too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have 
brought upon the pulpit the disrepute of dulness. 
The age now waits for the messenger in whose lov- 
ing heart there is the glow and the radiance of 
Divinest sympathy. The great actor himself would 
be the first to admit that the preacher cannot trace 
his own public secondariness to the poverty of his 
themes. Where the preacher falls behind the actor, 
it is because the preacher does not realise the 
majesty and the tenderness, the vehemence and 
urgency, of his own message. 



NOTE XXVI. 

Gladstone v. Salisbury, 
summing-up of the judge. 

Gentlemen of the Jury, the trial of these con- 
solidated cases is now, happily, approaching a ter- 
mination. As the Lord Chief Justice of the Moon, 
I congratulate you upon the impending close of 
your labours. It is now my duty, gentlemen, to 
lay the case before you with the strictest impartial- 
ity ; and if now and again I should unhappily lapse 
into a mixed metaphor, you must in all charity re- 
member that, through no fault of my own, I was 
born in an island where mixed metaphors excite no 
mean prejudices — a country *' surrounded by the 
melancholy main.'' 

Gentlemen of the Jury, both parties in this action 
are deeply interested in Hibernia, the pride of all 
who know her, and the envy of those who are ex- 
cluded from her favour. Both parties are suitors 
for her hand. Each party promises to do better 
for her than the other. So high, indeed, does feel- 
ing run on both sides that they would be delighted 
to murder one another, in a dramatic sense, if they 
could do so with proper regard to the etiquette of 
society. Gentlemen, they are only restrained from 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 173 

fatal violence by the gossamer of conventional hy- 
pocrisy. 

Gentlemen, fix your attention upon the parties. 
You have heard them for yourselves. The plaintiff 
is no longer criminally young. He appears to be a 
well-informed and somewhat thoughtful man. His 
manner in the witness-box was that of much energy, 
bordering, indeed, upon a considerable degree of 
self-confidence. At the same time, we cannot deny 
the indications of an intelligence which is probably 
in excess of that of the bulk of the masses. 

The defendant is also a person of some intelli- 
gence, and not altogether without a certain elemen- 
tary culture of manners. Probably they are both 
more than average specimens of what can be done 
by the Board Schools of a corrupt and decaying 
empire. The one works with an axe ; the other 
with a crucible. The one swears big ; the other 
genteelly affirms. Still, they both love Hibernia, 
and they long, each in his own way, to shed their 
blood in illustration of their idolatry. 

Gentlemen of the Jury, you must bring a dispas- 
sionate judgment to bear upon the case. Gentle- 
men, you must beware of the seductions of senti- 
ment. Gentlemen, in Heaven's name do not give 
way to those hollow emotions which are at once 
the ruin of justice and the wreck of patriotism. 
Gentlemen, you must steel your tender feelings 
whilst I lay the soul-harrowing facts before you in 
all their complicated and confounding simplicity. 

Gentlemen, the parties to this action proceed 
upon two distinctly opposite policies. The motto 



174 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

of the one policy is '' Union of Hearts " ; the motto 
of the other is *^ Resolute Control." Between 
these policies Hibernia, the calm and passionless, is 
torn with anguish. She loves them both. When 
she hears of the union of hearts, she says she could 
die happy if she could but see it ; when she hears 
of resolute control, she springs to her feet, and says 
she adores the man who is master of his own house. 
She looks upon handcuffs as the best bracelets. 

Gentlemen of the Jury, the case has been unhap- 
pily complicated by the action of a third party — 
always a dangerous party in love affairs — who would 
do something in the way of union of hearts, and 
something in the way of resolute control. You 
heard the witnesses Devonshire and Chamberlain, 
also persons of some mental capacity, and not with- 
out a degree of rude earnestness. They would 
allow Hibernia to take a weekly walk by herself in 
the society of a constable. They would allow her 
to buy her own clothes at prices which they would 
fix. They would be indulgent so long as, with one 
eye, they could watch her movements, and with 
the other listen to her secret conversation. Gentle- 
men, if I lapse into a broken metaphor, I plead the 
precedent of ages. 

Gentlemen, the witnesses who have passed before 
you must have left a vivid impression upon your 
minds. The witness Saunderson would impress 
you deeply. His placidity, his delicate use of 
terms, his cultured self-control, very powerfully in- 
fluenced the court. The witness Balfour was most 
frank and emphatic. He was like a razor without 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 175 

a handle. The witness Morley was cold, creedless, 
cruel in his memory of facts, and brutal in forcing 
premises to their logical issues. He was a shame- 
less critic, for he no sooner found a flaw in his 
opponent's dressing-gown than he thrust both arms 
into it, merely by way of pointing it out in a 
friendly spirit. If these witnesses could be shut up 
in the same cell overnight, one of them would not 
be there in the morning. 

Gentlemen, the plaintiff and the defendant have 
both been before you on oath. The plaintiff, 
though hesitant in speech, spoke warmly in praise 
of the union of hearts. Hibernia was obviously 
moved. Under her impassive demeanour it was 
easy to detect the play of those emotions which are 
at once the weakness and the strength of her sex. 
Gentlemen, Hibernia is a woman. It would be 
wicked to deny it. Gentlemen, a woman is flattered 
when two rival suitors are in quest of her, one 
climbing up a fire-escape, and the other pelting her 
with Coercion Acts. But what must be the torn 
and discoloured condition of her feelings when one 
of her suitors is a lord and the other his creator? 
Gentlemen, put away your cambric, and subdue 
your surgent emotions. 

Gentlemen of the Jury, your verdict will be 
awaited with intense anxiety by both the parties. 
Moments are eternities, yet, gentlemen, you must 
not be indecently hasty. You must weigh the 
evidence, not by putting the penny into the slot, 
but by standing up to the foot-rule with a patriotic 
indifference to the state of the weather. It is in 



176 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

this spirit that British juries have estabUshed their 
immortal reputation for so mixing up the facts of 
the case as to return verdicts which have staggered 
the intelligence of mankind. 

One of you asked me whether you are to remem- 
ber Mitchelstown. The more you forget, the bet- 
ter. I believe there is a cock-and-bull story about 
Mitchelstown — a mere pleasantry. Quite a novelty 
in the use of fire-irons, or, to speak more technically, 
of fire-arms. It was as if a man aimed at a kanga- 
roo in the Zoo, and the shot rebounded and killed a 
pig at Whitechapel. The incident need in no way 
affect the verdict. 

And now, Gentlemen of the Jury, I dismiss you 
to your room with one or two remarks of a broader 
sort. The eyes of the Empire are upon you. 
Europe stills her breath in expectation. Australia 
can neither eat nor sleep until you give your ver- 
dict. A calculated and expected eclipse cannot 
take place while you are deliberating. *^ The gaiety 
of nations " awaits your verdict. Hibernia hides 
her beauty behind her fabled shamrock until you 
pronounce her fate. Civilisation halts for you. 
Ireland blocks the way. Gentlemen, I give you no 
hint or sign of my own view. I have dined with 
the plaintiff and with the defendant, and yet they 
both retain their sanity. In my private capacity I 
have written leading articles against them both ; 
but sitting here, on this seat of justice, presiding at 
a bench untainted by a bribe, addressing a jury be- 
yond temptation, and moved to the very depths of 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 177 

my soul by a subject of which I know absolutely 
nothing, I dismiss you to your duties, and I retire 
to my usual enjoyments. 

After being absent three years and a half, the 
jury inquired if refreshments could be supplied, 
because the prospect of agreement was farther off 
than ever. 



« 



NOTE XXVII. 

What a curious world it is ! Yet it is criminal 
to leave it through the aid of " a bare bodkin/* 
Society will not allow its humblest member to 
hang himself behind the laundry door. He may do 
so, but the Church will pronounce no blessing on 
his bones. Society will part with its guests only on 
certain conditions. 

Yet society will not keep its own unemployed 
people. They may go to Tower Hill, of historic 
memory. Yet there is some excuse for society. 
Feeling tender-hearted towards one unemployed 
man, I got him to put a lock on a door, and he 
cleverly put it on upside down. I could not afford 
to employ him. He seemed to be a decent man, 
and to have had a Sunday-school training. But he 
was nothing at locks. My wonder was not that he 
was unemployed, but that he ever got a day's work. 

I employed a man to copy a circular letter for 
me, and to superscribe to it a list of names I gave 
him. He wrote the superscriptions thus : '' Dear 
Henry Smith, Esq.," '' Dear Hugh Conning, Esq." 
I could not stand it. Fifty copies thus written ! 
Fifty sheets of paper wasted ! I dismissed him. 
He is now on some Tower Hill, swearing politically 
at large. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 179 

Are all the unemployed like this ? Far from it. 
Some of the best men I have ever known are out 
of work. I see no prospect of the congestion be- 
ing relieved. Expedients are only momentary. 
There must be a redistribution of men over the 
face of the globe. Not a change of parishes, but a 
change of continents, is the thing. 

And the Land Question must be faced. The 
land should not be landlorded. Let there be com- 
pensation, but let the land be restored to the whole 
people. Not what my lord the duke has done, but 
what God meant to be done, is the question. Even 
a good duke makes a poor deity. We do not want 
to know how many cottages the earl or duke has 
built ; we want to know how he and his forefathers 
came into possession of the land. If honestly, let 
him be paid. Nothing unjust should be done. The 
nation must hold the land. Proprietorship in land 
should be made impossible to the individual. 

But the public-house will upset any land scheme. 
^^ Landlord " is an ambiguous word. It is a publi- 
can's title as well as a duke's. Let us get rid of it 
in both senses, especially and immediately in the 
publican's sense. If there was not one public-house 
in England there would not be one pauper. The 
workhouse would become a school, and the gaol a 
gymnasium, except as it might be wanted for the 
correction of delinquent directors and peccant 
magistrates. 

The gaol might, too, be wanted for the punish- 
ment of avaricious priestcraft. The worst priestcraft 
is that of non-sectarianism. There is a '' holiness" 



i8o MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

rotten as the apples of Sodom. I can do with 
honest infidelity, but I hate irreligious religion. 

I feel safer now that Parliament has assembled. 
I had almost given up hope of ever seeing it again. 
It is so young, I thought it might have gone astray. 
But all is now well. The guns are loaded. Al- 
ready the first harmless crash has fallen, and things 
remain much as before. The legislators dine nightly 
at each other's houses, and the wine-cellars are often 
lighted up. The senators are, no doubt, dying of 
anxiety, yet they dine well, and make use of much 
uncanonical language. Is England played out ? 

I don't want my newspaper to be simply critical, 
simply fault-finding. I want it to be also educa- 
tional. Every paper should have one guiding arti- 
cle, masterly in conception and expression, in 
politics, in literature, in art, or in religion. I al- 
ways distinguish between a newspaper and a scrap- 
book. I do not wish to speak disrespectfully of a 
rag-bag, yet I cannot honestly regard it as litera- 
ture. I speak generally, not specifically. 

Very few movements interest me more than the 
Leasehold Enfranchisement programme. The idea 
is right, and should be carried out to the highest 
development. It is a national question. It pene- 
trates to the innermost motive and sanctuary of 
patriotism. I always follow the movement with 
cordial interest. I trust that the Ecclesiastical 
Commissioners will be officially swept off the face 
of the earth. 



NOTE XXVIII. 

To preach is to lay down your very life for the 
sake of others. It is no namby-pamby work, no 
trick in intellectual confectionery, but a real ob- 
lation and sacrifice in the interests of others. 
Preachers cannot be made. They come forth from 
the unseen altar clothed in the white linen of sim- 
plicity and love, and burn with the fire which 
warms the universe. There is no ice in love. 

Once I was under the impression that if people 
could read and write they would be virtuous, and 
through their virtue would save the public a good 
deal of expense in the way of prisons and work- 
houses. It is the sloppiest nonsense. The direc- 
tors of public companies can read and write. The 
authors of swindling prospectuses may even know 
a little French. Learning does more harm to soci- 
ety than can be done by ignorance. Ignorance may 
throw stones ; knowledge can deposit dynamite. 

Christian institutions are now being dragged 
through the mire with a vengeance. What with 
magic-lanterns instead of sermons, gymnasia in 
place of pulpits, and alphabetic letters instead of 
plain titles, I am simply bewildered. A new lingo 
makes me feel myself a stranger on the earth and 
an alien in the Church. 

The new lingo sounds to me like this : The P. I. 



i82 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

G. movement is being sustained very ably by the 
F. O. G. bands, and they, in their turn, are power- 
ful rivals of the D. O. G. brigades, and if a G. A. S. 
club could be set up in every hamlet, we should 
hear less of the H. O. P. scheme, and secure a lar- 
ger circulation for the P. O. P. magazine. 

All this may possibly tell for good upon the 
masses, and if so I will not say a word against it ; 
but I think the masses are not to be drawn to the 
ecclesiastical bridle by any such empty sieves. The 
masses are often strong in common-sense. They 
like to be treated in a frank and manly style, and 
not after the manner of '' Will you walk into my 
parlour?" Never deceive a man into religion. 
Never capsule your piety with a game at bagatelle. 

Herein Spurgeon was the wonder of the Church. 
Without gown or bands, without a choir or a fiddle, 
without an organ or a drum, he drew the largest 
congregation in the world, and held it for a lifetime. 
George Eliot might sneer at him, but the fact 
remained that, without accessories of any kind, with 
only the common ground for a pedestal, he filled 
the world with his influence, and outran the fleetest 
genius that ever started to tell nothing to nobody. 

Some people are very much depressed by the M. 
W. M. movement. '' What ! " they exclaim, " ;^24,- 
OOO a week for finding a missing word, and so many 
institutions begging ? " Christianity, as represented 
by the churches and all related charities, raises 
vastly more than ;^24,ooo a week. The devil is 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 183 

spasmodic. We see all the bubbles he blows. 
True work is deep work, silent work, incessant work. 
The eternal will overthrow the infernal. For some 
issues we must wait. We can order a hothouse, 
but we must wait for a summer. 

Orthodoxy must also have its gin-and-water, or 
its sneezy condiments. Salvation by picnic is not a 
Bible word. It must within five years come to 
nothing. Let us go to the Alps and bury our ani- 
mosities in snow. Let us go to Chicago and show 
how Christians can travel for next to nothing, and 
yet pile up a handsome profit. Let us go to Jeru- 
salem, and during a picnic on Olivet get ourselves 
so mixed up with one another as not to know who 
had godmothers and who had none. 

When will men undertake to Christianise Lon- 
don ? Create strong centres in the City, and the 
circumference will feel the vital thrill. Call at Con- 
stantinople, if you Hke, and go on a trip to Jerusa- 
lem, or buy Saratoga trunks and be off to Chicago, 
but remember that the blood of London is on your 
skirts, and the citizens of your own metropolis may 
be perishing for lack of knowledge. The men we 
now want are men who will tackle the City, and 
build an altar with the very stones of Mammon. 
Oh, for a converted London ! 

It would be bad for trade, though, at the first — 
bad for the public-house, bad for the racecourse, bad 
for the brothel, bad for swindlers, bad for liars ; 
nevertheless, afterwards it would be summer and 
harvest, abundance and sweet content. 



NOTE XXIX. 

Superstition dies hard. Everybody has been 
saying so ever since there was nothing else to say. 
I wonder on whose starry mind that wisdom first 
alighted ? The last enemy that shall be destroyed 
in literature is Anonymousness. If you casually 
remark that William James says so-and-so, people 
say, Who on earth is William James? But if you 
say the Christmas number of the Midland Bugler 
says so-and-so, people bow in an attitude of dumb 
prostration. Whereas, when all comes to all, it is 
discovered that the said authoritative Christmas 
number was written by William James. 

William would be laughed off any platform, 
because his manner is heavy, his tongue is leaden, 
and his language is lame on both feet. But when 
William comes out with the Midland Bngler for 
a mask, the very people who laughed at him quote 
him as an authority. But, then, they did not know 
it was William. That's the point. When William 
smeared himself with ink, they thought he was a 
discoloured deity. It was only William. 

They say — because they are mean enough to say 
anything — that preaching is dying out. I am quite 
sure that leading articles are having a hard time of 
it. People now like to have even leaders cut short. 
As a matter of fact, they cut them short without 
making any pretence about it. They are fond of 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 185 

^^bits/* Live Bits^ Jumping Bits, Laughing Bits, 
and a limited company may be expected, as soon as 
confidence in directors is restored, to bring out 
Bits of Bits, or journalism reduced to spoon-meat. 
Preaching cannot be scissored down to that. 

Leading articles puzzle me. Whoever the Prime 
Minister of the day may be, this is what I read 
about him : " Last night the Premier outshone him- 
self in every quality that has created the highest 
reputation of British eloquence.'* Then I take up 
another leader, and it says : *^ Last night the Pre- 
mier emptied the whole English dictionary upon the 
heads of as unintelligent an assembly as ever gath- 
ered in the historic name of Englishmen." Now, 
v/hich of the writers am I to believe, for they both 
attend the same parish church? Indeed, one of 
them is the clergyman. 

Man is odd. It is difficult to fit ''the humans'' 
with the boots of consistency. The boots will 
wear out at the heels. The man who nailed his 
colours to the mast has got over the difficulty by 
selling the mast to another man. The budding 
statesman, whose motto was ''No boycotting," has 
given up his laundress because she washes for the 
other side. He says, " No, ma'am, you shall never 
boil my shirt in the caldron which holds the linen 
of an enemy." As if a laundress ever boiled any 
man's shirt when she could hide the dirt with 
chemicals ! 

It is absurd to say that there are no clever laun- 



i86 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

dresses. I had one who needed so much soap every 
week that I made a study of her character. I con- 
sidered her from a strictly moral point of view. 
Sixteen bars of brown soap every week made me 
wonder if it is true that cleanliness is next to godli- 
ness, because a pew-rent was nothing to my soap- 
bill. After the soap, the preaching came moderate. 
The laundress herself is dead, but she has left a 
large family all in the same way of business. 

Are we ever going to get the electric light all 
over, and pretty reasonable in price? The gas 
people have been so kind to me that I am thinking 
of presenting them with a piece of plate, as the new 
maid has just dropped one on the hearthstone. 
One gasman sold me a ** governor '' which was to 
save me 25 per cent. Another sold me a burner 
which would save me 25 per cent. more. At the 
end of the quarter my gas bill was nine and eight- 
pence more than it had ever been. 

A third gasman brought me a patent, guaranteed 
not only to purify the light and steady the uneasy 
flame, but to save me at least 50 per cent, in the 
item of consumption. I said, *' Will you repeat 
that in the presence of a witness?" He said he 
would. I then brought up a bull terrier, blind of 
one eye, but seeing very clearly with the other. 
The man took the patent away and left me with 
the dog. Unconscious influence. 

I believe the alarming rumours about Mr. Glad- 
stone's health. They are not one whit too alarm- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 187 

ing. That a man over eighty-three should have 
full possession of every faculty, and should be as 
deeply interested in politics as any youngster of 
sixty, is indeed a very alarming rumour to his poli- 
tical enemies. If he will only see that Protestantism 
is protected, my daily prayer shall be, '' Lang may 
your lum reek," a prayer which warms and gladdens 
every Scottish heart. 

Dr. Johnson said that a man who would make a 
pun would pick a pocket. Whereupon I venture 
to say that a man who would make an epigram 
would eat an elephant. The one is just as true as 
the other. *' Papers will please copy.'* Some of 
our boys reading this remark in the colonies may 
recall old times with a shudder. I don't mind if 
they do. Anything to make the boys more content 
with their lot. 

In looking over the markets as reported in the 
papers, I see with great satisfaction, that, whilst olive, 
oil is quiet, turpentine is firm, and that, notwith- 
standing the severity of the weather, pig-iron is 
looking up. This is intensely interesting to all 
those social workers — genuine sons of toil — who are 
unsuspecting enough to believe that the voice of 
the markets is the voice of God. 



NOTE XXX. 

I CALLED on myself the other day, and found 
myself comfortably seated in the middle of a cold 
bath, looking cheerfully, though dubiously, for the 
Turkish bath sheet, which I sorrowfully discovered 
to have been taken away by my eldest boy to 
cover the roof of a rabbit-hutch in the back-garden 
of a neighbour whose politics make me despair of 
the progress of mankind. I was not surprised to 
find myself keenly nettled by this act of filial dis- 
regard for a parent's position and feelings, though I 
controlled my emotions sufficiently to wrap my- 
self in one of the boy's own sheets, which I rein- 
serted, in a damp condition, into his bed, with a 
consciousness that I had got ahead of my offspring. 
I queried myself on many topics, and I fancy I 
got out of myself all that was available at the time. 
It is a way of mine not to leave many pickings for 
dogs that come in ver>^ late. I always say they 
should be in good time if they really mean busi- 
ness, and if they don't mean it, they should not 
come in at all. 

Says I to myself, more in a chatty than in an 
academic way, '' Now, on the whole," says I, " where 
were you born, governor ? " 

Says I, ''The question is mean and frivolous, and' 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 189 

is more adapted to a toad than to a man." Says I, 
'' Mend it." 

Then said the Other Eye, ** Mend it yourself." 

*' Very good/' said I. ^^Then, why was I born? 
is a deeper question, and one that I can drown in. 
I never asked to be born ; I never had the faintest 
desire to see this world. I could no sooner turn 
round in the world than a man told me that I was 
descended from Adam and Eve, and I told him it 
was a lie, and he ought to be ashamed of himself 
for talking such abominable nonsense to a little 
boy not old enough to have any pocket-money. 
Then says I to him, after I had cooled awhile, 
* And who are you descended from ? ' And says 
he, * From Adam and Eve.* And then I knew it 
was a joke, and let it pass. But if you really want 
to know why I was born, I really cannot tell you. 
It is an awful thing to be born ; next to dying, it 
is about the most awful thing." 

** Well," says I, wishing to make matters as cheer- 
ful as possible, ** what time do you rise in the 
morning? '' 

Said I pathetically, ordering the tears back to 
their briny cells, *^ Which morning? " 

" Any morning — every morning," was the gruff 
reply. Said I, "That all depends. As a rule, I 
never get up so long as I can lie still. I never like 
to get up thoughtlessly, because you might hit 
something with your shins, and hurt it past mend- 
ing. I always like to wake just in time to find it is 
not time to get up. There — just at that very point 
— waking is ' twice blest ' : it blesseth him that 



I90 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

wakes, and him that turneth over on the other side ; 
it humours the imagination and draws the teeth of 
conscience." 

''Thanks," said Eye. ''What rules do you lay 
down in the family ? " 

Said I " Their number is innumerable, and their 
value is more than rubies. I press upon my sons 
the duty and the dawny delight of getting up quite 
soon. I tell them how opally the sky is when they 
are not looking at it, and how extremely, and even 
aggressively, diamonded the meadows are about 
four o'clock on a midsummer morning. I say, 
'Boys,' I say, ' up betimes is your parent's motto.' 
They cannot pelt me with the tu quoqiie, because 
I have trained them carefully in a way which en- 
ables them to believe that I write in the bedroom, 
and that even a mouse could not hear my move- 
ments, so desirous am I not to disturb the slum- 
bers of innocence. They know that I have a talent 
for writing verse, and happily they are too finely 
strung to ask me to read it to them. I own that 
prejudiced moralists might find fault with this state 
of affairs ; but jaundice paints everj'thing yellow, 
and jaundice I will not encourage." 

"And with regard to your girls," said the Other 
Eye, " what rules do you lay down ? " 

" Well," said I meditatively — I always say "Well '* 
when I don't know what else to say — " the exact 
number of the rules is 2.017. I grieve to say it, I 
do." 

''And are they all kept? " said the Other Eye. 

'* Every blessed one of them," I answered. " The 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 191 

2,017 rules are not only duly observed, but hon- 
oured/* 

"That is very wonderful," said the Other Eye. 

I admitted it was ; yet, to the credit of the seven 
girls who curl their auburn hair every night at the 
expense of their indulgent parent, I added that, if I 
were to extend the rules, and make them the even 
number of 2,018, I believe the last would be as 
cheerfully obeyed as the first. Said I, '^ Not only 
do I believe it : I know it, and I glory in it." 

" Now," said the Other Eye, '' coming to politics/* 

" Come on," said I. 

" How do you stand on that critical ground?" 

*^ Tip-tip above every other man in Europe," said 
I, in a tone of distressing humbleness ; " I am the 
man who brought in the ecclesiastical millennium — " 

" Kind heavens ! " the Other Eye interrupted. 

"I did," I calmly, and somewhat majestically, 
continued, '' and all Europe knows I am the man." 

" How did you do it ? " 

" Got all the clerics to Switzerland, shut them up 
in a comfortable gasthaus, turned the key upon 
them, and listened at the keyhole. Bless you ! in 
the morning, when the man brought up the shav- 
ing-water, the archbishops would only shave with 
Dissenting razors, and Dissenters lathered them- 
selves with cathedral soap. I felt sure I could do 
it, and I did it. It could never have been done in 
England. I have long held that words are the 
ruin of union and the curse of mankind, so I got 
the clerics into a country where they could not 
speak a word of the language, and I lent them an 



192 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

alpenstock apiece, and took their portraits in groups ; 
and from that moment the sun rose in the West, 
and swallows built their cosy nests in the broiling 
snow/* 

'* But how about politics? *' 

" Just the same ; the principle applies all round. 
I am offering free tickets and free beds to Lord 
Salisbury and Mr. Gladstone, and I am confident 
the Jungfrau will bring about the lion-and-lamb 
idea — quite a favourite idea of the lion^s. Then I 
shall take the doctors over — the allopaths and the 
homoeopaths, the orthodox bolus and the heterodox 
pilule ; and on the slopes of Mont Blanc they shall 
bury their hatchets with decorous joy. Mark me ! 
on this point my blood is up.'* 

The Other Eye behaved respectfully because it 
took in the situation at a glance ; it took in the 
meaning of my fine enthusiasm ; it glittered in sym- 
pathy ; it melted into speech : 

'' How delightful ! ** 

" Yes,'* said I, " but how doleful for Switzerland ! 
At the foot of every mountain an arbitration ! On 
the top story of every hotel an armed neutrality ! 
On the edge of every glacier men writing their wills 
in hot haste ! Yet Switzerland is the place, or 
Belgium, because of being neutral ground, and neu- 
tral ground is the only place on which you can 
murder a man with any show of dignity or moral 
satisfaction.** 

'' Thanks,'* said the Other Eye. 

'' No doubt of it,** I replied ; '' but don*t play the 
donkey, and take me too literally. Some wooden- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 193 

heads would regard all this as an affidavit, and 
write misleading articles to prove that it is not true. 
Have you seen wooden-heads ? *' 

'' I think so." 

" Then, avoid them ; never lend them a penny. 
Cultivate your imagination, and look for the inner- 
most meaning of things ; and when you come back 
for a second interview, we will talk over men and 
things, and make shrouds for the overshadowing 
nobodies who ought to have been in their graves 
long ago.'* 

When I found the lecture fit come on I gave 
over. 



NOTE XXXI. 

'^The man from Blankley*s*' got where the ama- 
teur Egyptologist should have been, and Lord 
Strathsporran got where the man from Blankley's 
was expected. Hence the comedy of errors. 
Punch has told all about Lord Strathsporran in his 
happiest vein. It is for me to tell what happened 
in the case of the other man, to whom I will refer 
as Amateur. It will be remembered that the host's 
name was Cartouche, and that he was deeply inter- 
ested in the antiquities of Egypt. 

Probably Amateur, '' the man from Blankley's,*' 
may have heard that there is such a place as Egypt, 
but that was all. Both Amateur and Strathsporran 
were absolute strangers to Mr. Cartouche, the dif- 
ference being that Strathsporran had inquired by 
letter if he could see the Egyptian curiosities, and 
had been politely invited to do so, and to dine at 
the same time. He went next door by mistake, 
and by mistake Amateur went to Cartouche's. 

'' Glad to make your acquaintance. Glad to show 
you all my Egyptian curios. Glad to have such a 
bond of union, Mr. Claymore.'* 

Amateur was astounded, but said nothing. He in- 
ferred that he was a veiled figure — " a sort of incog,'* 
he called himself. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 195 

^' You have given a good deal of time to Egyp- 
tian studies, Mr. Claymore.'' 

^' Oh yes, sir, and don't regret it,*' 

*' Are you prepared to identify ' the tabernacles 
of Ham ' with Egypt, or do you prefer the Arabic 
Misr?" 

" I do, sir," said Amateur, " though I have no pre- 
judice against Ham — far from it; but the other 
seems more natural like, and more civil." 

Cartouche put up his eye-glass. 

*^ I once spent six months in Ghareeyeh, in the 
northern province." 

''God bless my soul, sir!" said Amateur; ''I 
never so much as heard of it. Hot or cold, as the 
common saying is ? " 

Here Mrs. Cartouche entered, and spoiled the 
effect. 

Later : 

''You are aware, Mr. Claymore, that a little above 
Thebes the sandstone commences?" 

"Yes, sir, so you say." 

" Wonderful scenery midway between the Nile 
and the Red Sea, where the primitive rocks burst 
into full view " 

"Burst, do they?" 

" Yes ; through the later formation. Why, one 
of the granite mountains is said to be 6,000 feet 
high." 

Aloud : " Glad to hear you say so, sir." To him- 
self : " Comical old crank, this, and so very con- 
descending and f ree ! Wonder what the dickens he 
thinks I am." 



196 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

*^ I often say," continued Mr. Cartouche, '' that in 
many respects the lake El-Menzeeleh is ^the pret- 
tiest water I ever saw.*' 

'' Salty at all ? '' said Amateur. 

'* Well, yes, a little ; it is mixed. It receives the 
waters of the Melusian and the Pelusiac canals " 

*^ Canals?" 

'' Yes." 

" Got canals out there, have they ? But what I 
do like, sir, of a fine Sunday is just a little quiet 
dawdle round about Virginia Water, or it's not bad 
down by Richmond yonder on a real sunny day." 

Cartouche (to himself): '* Most extraordinary! 
Man's got rather a shapely face, yet I suspect a vein 
of insanity. It may be affectation, though. Per- 
haps he thinks I have no relics." (Eyes him atten- 
tively. Remarks on the weather, and Amateur 
brightens into intelligence.) 

" That deuced floody, sloppy, eternal rainy sort 
of thing is what we could do without in this coun- 
try. They might take it over there and make a few 
more canals, and jolly pleased I should be. You'll 
excuse me, sir, making so free, but I see you are not 
like those hide-bound old Pharisees [Amateur has 
had wine] I visited the other night." 

" Yes," said Mr. Cartouche ; '' we have rain 
enough for the ibis religiosa to wade in." 

"Yes ; but mum's the word," said Amateur, ''and 
Egypt is as good a thing to talk about as some- 
thing nearer home. The people, I mean," said 
Amateur, "were jolly queer. The old lady told me 
how much wine I was to drink, and how very little 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 197 

1 was to say, and she told me point-blank that her 
eye was upon me/* 

Cartouche (to himself)": ** Confirms my opinion. 
He is a little off the balance. It may be mere affec- 
tation, but I doubt it. Perhaps I had better fool 
him a little.'' 

Amateur (to himself) : *^ Nothing stiff here. 
Treats me as an equal. True gentleman. Looks it. 
Calls me Claymore, and not Mulligans. I don't like 
his wife's look, though. He'll catch it." 

*^ You'll excuse me, sir, I know^you will. I would 
take more kindly to the profession if every one was 
like you. Between ourselves, sir, I may give it as 
my opinion that ceremony keeps friends apart a 
good deal, and it ought to be put down. There 
ought to be a meeting about it in Hyde Park. I 
know a man who could say many fine things about 
it, and cutting, too." 

This was Mr. Cartouche's chance. He must do 
something. 

Eyeing Mr. Claymore pleasantly, he said : 

*^ Try my wife on the subject of Egypt. Ask her 
what she thinks of Lane's theories of the dynasties. 
Do not say that I sent you. You like to make 
friends with the ladies, don't you ? " 

'* Love it. Live for it. Know how to do it all 
day." 

" Then success to you," said Mr. Cartouche. 

" Madam," said Amateur, in the best Blankley 
style, '^your husband has favoured me with some 
remarks on the subject of Egypt." 

^^And I, sir," said the lady, ''will beg you not 



(98 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

further to refer to it. That one subject is the rock 
on which we split. If you could persuade my hus- 
band to give up Egypt, you would be a friend of 
the family.'' 

To himself : ^' Thought so — thought he had a 
slate off. Saw it in his eye. No sooner did I get 
into the house than he was off to Egypt. He 
should see a doctor. He should get a nurse. This 
man should be watched. I would like the job." 
To her : '' Madam, may I express my heartfelt 
agreement with you ? May I thank you? I read 
your meaning, and I respect it. I have been won- 
dering why on earth he should talk to me upon 
EgyP^- I^ ^s ^ country for which I have no re- 
spect." 

'' But I thought you were an Egyptologist, and 
that you wanted to talk about Egypt ? " 

*' Heaven forbid, madam ! I am an honest man." 

** Have you never been in Egypt ? " 

** Never. Nothing would induce me to visit a 
land of pagans and of robbers, and, I may say, a 
land of canals." 

Mrs. Cartouche walked towards her husband, and 
he rose to meet her. 

Whisperingly : '' Who is this creature, Stephen ? 
Out of what Egyptian canal did you drag him ? 
Listen to his accent. No Cockney in Whitechapel 
is lower bred. Stephen, you must at once remove 
him." 

Amateur explains the case in detail. 

" Then you are a dummy from Blankley's ? " 

*' A sort of incog., sir.** 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 199 

" You fill a vacant seat when a guest fails ? " 

**That is my evening profession. Dress-coat 
found.*' 

'* And you ought to have gone next door? " 

** I suppose so." 

'^Then, what in the name of justice is to be 
done?" 

" A guinea settles it." 

And prithee, reader, are we not all doing this 
very thing? Is it not a mixed-up world we are 
housed in ? Is not some one else living on your 
money ? Are you not dining at the wrong table ? 
Whose coat are you wearing ? Yes ; it is a world 
of mismatches, yet it swings round the sun in obe- 
dience to the music which rules the silent dance of 
the planets. 



NOTE XXXII. 

It was Miranda who was so sensitive. She had 
a right to be, for she was so very tall that all the 
street stared at her when she went out alone, and 
all the town was on the giggle when she walked 
with any one else, the other one being reduced to a 
degree of disgraceful insignificance. Dear Miranda 
felt everything so very much. In fact, she felt 
everything long before any one thought of doing it. 
She said it was in the air, then it was in her bones, 
and finally it was in her nerves. People who took 
things freshly and naturally were very vulgar in 
dear Miranda's estimation. She said they were 
" born out of due season,'* though what she meant 
I never fully knew. I think she intended the re- 
mark to be cutting without being overmuch unkind, 
but I never pressed her on the point. Miranda's 
pale father was also very sensitive. He was a 
tailor, but he called himself a clothier, and always 
lived in a corner house by way of preference. 

He was so very shrinking and modest that he 
always felt deeply hurt if he was not asked to speak 
at every tea-meeting held in connection with my 
little village chapel ; and, as he always spoke 
mostly in rhyme, he added the sensitiveness of the 
poet's temperament to the delicacy of the clothier's 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 201 

occupation, without feeling the inconvenience of 
never paying any pew-rent. 

Miranda sang a little, and her father recited much 
— always his own composition. So between them, 
and in view of their extreme sensitiveness, our prepa- 
rations for the fourteen annual tea-meetings, by the 
aid^of which we kept up the flavour of our orthodoxy, 
were often embarrassing, and sometimes disappoint- 
ing. Miranda's father had no ear for rhyme. His 
sensitiveness did not lie in that direction. In his 
comic pieces one line would end with ''wardrobe" 
and the other with '' fireirons," yet we did not ven- 
ture to point this out, because we knew his remark- 
able refinement and sensitiveness, and perhaps he 
might have felt it. One old lady in the congrega- 
tion — I say one to contradistinguish her from the 
many — said quite loudly at one of the meetings 
that he knew no more poetry than her pattens 
knew, but she was stifled by the poet's friends, who 
enjoyed seeing the poet make a fool of himself. 
To several, this spectacle was the best part of some 
of the fourteen annual tea-meetings. 

They were not poets themselves, but they stuck 
up for the general principle that *' fair play's a 
jewel," and the right of the citizen to show how 
wrong he could be. They said they were demo- 
crats, and I am bound to admit that they looked it. 
Whether I so acted as to mislead Miranda as to my 
estimate of her father's poetry I cannot positively 
say, yet I fear it must have been so, because she 



202 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

was in the habit of saying, in a confidential tone, 
" Father's made another piece/' 

" Does he make the pieces easily ? " I inquired. 

** Sometimes he does." 

** Then," said I, '^at other times he finds it a 
tough job? " 

'' Oh yes ; in this very last piece he was trying to 
make the word ' avalanche ' rhyme with the word 
Wolcano,' and he couldn't do it nohow {szc)^ and I 
told him I would ask you if he could not say * ava- 
lancheo,' and in this way get it." 

Thus the very thing I detested had become a 
kind of bond of union between me and Miranda. 
I was to be a teacher of epics ! I was to instruct 
the clothier in pentameters ! 

** But," said I, '' you do not know how sensitive 
I am." 

" And so is dear father," said Miranda ; " and they 
say I got it from him ; and we both say, as shouldn't, 
that poor mother feels nothing — not even the slights 
and snubs she gets at the chapel, in particular at 
the Dorcas, and more nor once at that dirty little 
Band of Hope." 

*' Bless me ! " I exclaimed, ** all this is news." 

'* Because mother wouldn't say nothing about it," 
Miranda explained. ^^ She don't see the slight ; she 
makes out that people don't mean it ; and when we 
tell her that people have snubbed her, she always 
says, ' Why should they ? ' and all that sort of rot." 

'* Your mother is a Christian, Miranda." 

** But she's no proper feeling about her." 

'' I think she has, Miranda." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 203 

"You would not think so if you knew her better. 
She would allow even the deacons to trample upon 
her. And there's that fussy little secretary of the 
goose and coal club actually makes game of father's 
poetry, and mother never gives it back to him.*' 

"What a lovely character she must be ! '* 

"But hard to live with," said Miranda; " and all 
for want of proper pride. That's what father calls 
it. He says there is a proper pride, and he means 
to keep to it. Father won't stand no nonsense 
even from the chairman of the Local Board. Father 
says that man has not got an idea in his head that's 
worth a brass button. Once father showed him a 
few verses he had made about the main sewer they 
are cutting just outside the village, and father says 
he was ashamed of the language that rude man 
used." 

" You don't happen to remember a word or two 
of It?" said I. 

" Father would never tell us. He says it turns 
him blue to think of it. He says there are many 
reasons for turning that man away." 

Miranda's mother was no relation of hers. She 
was her mother, in the registrar's sense of that 
term, yet she was a stranger to Miranda. Round- 
faced and much shining about the eyes and the 
upper cheeks, she was most frank and downright in 
all her thought and speech. There was no need 
to tell her to call a spade a spade, for she could 
never think of calling it by any other name, not- 
withstanding its possible sensitiveness to indignity. 



204 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

How she came to marry Miranda's father was 
always a puzzle to me until I was told that she had 
a little income in her own right. Little incomes 
may account for great inconsistencies. Miranda 
was their only child, but tall enough for several. 
They who had Miranda had a family. 

"Then," I said to Miranda's mother, ^^ you do 
not easily or foolishly take offence ? " 

" I never think any offence is meant," said she. 

*'Your husband and daughter are more sensi- 
tive?" 

^* I don't call it by such a fine name," she replied. 
"That's where so many people get wrong. If they 
would call it nasty, dirty pride they might get 
cured. That's what I call it. I say there is noth- 
ing else in it. As to taking offence, I am one of 
the people that bugs don't bite." 

I told you Miranda's mother called things by 
their right names. 

Miranda's mother was a Christian, though a poor 
hand at theology. 

In this poor driving life of ours there should be 
only time for sympathy and help. Words of bit- 
terness spoil what little music there is. The most 
of men are better than they seem to be. Let us 
shoot down all evil, but spare the man who does it. 
The soul is bigger than the sin. 



NOTE XXXIIL 

It is no use denying the law of compensation ; 
there it is. Man is a self-comforting animal. I 
have long known that. He calls drunkenness dip- 
somania ; he calls theft kleptomania. Everybody 
knows that. But a man of high spirits has just 
passed through the Bankruptcy Court, and he feels 
himself comforted by calling that fact an ** episode.'* 
I like the vagueness of the word ; besides, it does 
not grate upon the feelings. Why should it ? Es- 
pecially on mine, as I am not a creditor. 

Be on your guard, if you please ; I speak feel- 
ingly. A friend said to me : 

** That man began life with three-ha'pence ; how 
much do you think he is worth now ? " 

I cautiously suggested : 

" Five thousand." 

" No," said my friend, " he's not worth a brass 
farthing." 

Yet I call that monster my friend ! My charity 
has blinded my judgment. He will be trying to 
borrow money of me in our next interview. Impu- 
dence is a thriving weed. 

A minister in the North tells me that, because he 
is anti-Gladstonian on the one question of Ireland, 
his principal subscriber has given up his sitting. 



2o6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Yet this is the sort of man who vapours against co- 
ercion and frowns upon boycotting ! It is very sad. 
This is the shady side of Dissent. I am a Glad- 
stonian heart and soul, yet I would not take the 
bread out of the mouth of an honest opponent. 
Nor would Mr. Gladstone. He is the soul of hon- 
our and generosity. 

Poor preachers ! I pity some of them. Let 
them say what is unpopular, and hassocks will be 
sent for by the dozen. So much for Christian 
manhood ; so much for Christian love. No ; I will 
correct myself. So much for the want of them. 

It must not be thought that ministers have more 
than their share of trouble. Some have none. 
We do not know when a merchant loses a customer, 
but five hundred people may know when a seat- 
holder gives up his seat. As a shoemaker, you 
know well enough that many customers have left 
you because of your bad leather and your bad fit. 
If yours had been sermon-shoes, all your other cus- 
tomers would have heard of it. 

When I was a young pastor, a greengrocer left 
me because of a sermon I preached on bad weights 
and scales. He said such a subject should be 
preached upon on week-days, not on Sundays. This 
holy soul never attended a week-day service. Man 
is odd. 

I never read or write anonymous letters, but I 
receive bagfuls. I have thrown into the fire " An 
Admirer,** ^*A Seat-holder,'* and ''A Believer in 
the Lord Jesus Christ." Why do writers hide their 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 207 

names ? Why do they waste their stamps ? If you 
have anything to say to a man, say it openly, kindly, 
modestly. Never put a blanket round your head 
when you are going to kick a man. It has a mean 
look, and I am sure you have no wish to be mean. 

Yet, meanness is a very subtle business. It was 
mean of you to put a penny into the collection with 
the air of a man who was putting in half a crown. 
You tried to look silver when you should have 
looked cheap copper. You cannot sanctify fraud 
by singing very loudly. 

It was mean of you to give a thousand pounds 
for the conversion of the heathen when you were 
not giving your own young men in the warehouse 
enough to marry on. If they committed sin, I hold 
you responsible for their guilt. Never save a black 
man at the risk of damning a white one. First 
evangelise your own warehouse, and then draw a 
cheque for China. 

It is mean of you to keep a partner to do your 
dirty work. You try to play the gentleman and 
the Christian by letting him tell all the lies and 
turn all the thumb-screws. I am ashamed of you. 
And you a church-goer! you a psalm-singer! you 
an Exeter Hall chairman ! It is very horrible — 
very infernal. 

The Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a capital 
idea in view. It is to make all their leases practi- 
cally perpetual. This would work immensely to 
the advantage of all the parties concerned. I hope 
no time will be lost in giving effect to the idea. It 



208 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

is statesmanlike, and will without doubt be very 
popular. 

Perhaps you do not know Mr. and Mrs. Bulson. 
Yes, you do ; they live in your house, or next door. 
Did you ever speak to the people next door? They 
are so funny. They are quite a study. They look 
at you from behind the window-curtains, and grin 
atfyou, just the same as you do when you think 
they are not looking. Man is a self-deceiving ani- 
mal. 

So the swift weeks come and go. The invisible 
thief, called Time, steals the gold of our life, and 
brings our body to the pauper-bed of the grave. It 
is a mean hospitality, and would be meaner and 
deadlier still had we no hope of the generous feast 
beyond. 



NOTE XXXIV. 

Two people in my village congregation were 
specially *' observant/' They seemed to be all eyes. 
They claimed that nothing occurred within their 
circle which they did not at once and completely 
discern and estimate. That was the explanation of 
all their personal remarks upon other people. If I 
did not see what they saw, it was because I was 
not " observant.*' This remark they used as a kind 
of nettle with which they stung me in the very act 
of offering their frugal hospitality. 

" Did you see how the elders behaved during 
your sermon last Sunday morning? '* 

"No, Mr. Bulson, I did not." 

** Then you should really be more observant. I 
saw, my wife saw — in fact, how anybody could help 
seeing is a perfect mystery to me.'' 

The fact is, I never see how anybody behaves 
during my sermons. I am so busy with the sermons 
themselves as to have no time to look at the people 
one by one. Yet the remark made by these ob- 
servant people, the Bulsons, gave me pain. It is 
easy to plague a minister. Remarks which he could 
treat with contempt if he were only a citizen may 
annoy him very deeply in his pastoral capacity. 
Some kind critics never enter into particulars ; they 
only excite suspicions, and suggestively admonish 
an absent-minded minister to be '' more observant." 



210 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

^^ What do you know about the man who preached 
for you last month ? " 

'' Only that he is as honest a soul as ever 
breathed." 

*'Then, I may take it that this is your opinion ? " 

" You may. It is an opinion founded upon 
facts." 

** No doubt you think so. He was our guest 
from Saturday until Monday. I assure you we 
observed him very carefully from the moment he 
entered the house until the moment he left it." 

*' Yes, we did," says Mrs. Bulson ; ^^and I have 
no wish to go further into the subject. I suppress 
my feelings. It is an effort to do so, I assure you, 
but I will not give expression to my emotions." 

*^ Cork 'em down," said Bulson. *^ It is no use 
troubling our esteemed pastor with painful subjects. 
I always say that a pastor's mind should be kept 
free from worries." 

My anger was rising rapidly. I could have 
scotched both the snakes, but I thought of my ail- 
ing wife and five little children at home, and so I 
damped down the dangerous flame. I was, how- 
ever, nearly uncontrollable when they whiningly 
talked of sparing my feelings. I hate to be put 
under obligations of that kind. To be protected 
by the Bulsons I To owe my very sleep to the 
Bulsons ! For them to look at me with eyes that 
said, '* We could break your heart, but we design- 
edly and affectionately forbear to do so ! " It was 
too much for me many a time. The Bulsons were 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 211 

elderly people who, with a comfortable income, 
lived in a comfortable house, and conferred dignity 
on the village chapel by taking two sittings in it, 
and '' observing " in the minutest manner the un- 
studied actions of the rustic congregation. 

" Did you observe how the Joneses have painted 
the outside of their house? " 

'' No." 

*' Most hideously. We always have to pass it on 
our way to chapel, and the violent greens and reds 
quite make our eyes smart. No doubt some people 
pass the disgusting spectacle and never see it. It 
would be a mercy very often to be blind." 

''And deaf," I added ; but the meaning was not 
observed ; some observant people occasionally miss 
a point. 

The Bulsons were not on familiar terms with the 
whole congregation. They lived within the high 
walls of their comfortable income. They secluded 
themselves within the towering palings of their 
dignity. To have a nod from the Bulsons was 
something to be remembered. It was equal to 
Congregational knighthood. To have tea at the 
Bulsons' was to graduate double first, with seven- 
fold honours. To differ from the Bulsons was not 
mere heterodoxy, it was " flat blasphemy." The 
Bulsons were '' observant." All the people knew 
that the Bulsons were observant, and in mortal terror 
of their scrutiny the people often did things which 
quite destroyed their reputation with the Bulsons. 
The awkward things were all done unintentionally, 



212 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

and were the result of downright nervousness, 
similar to that which once made a little boy say 
'^Yes, ma'am/' to me, and then stammer out 
" Thank you " when I asked him to pick up my 
walking-stick. There is a terrorism which paralyses 
the most conspicuous innocence. 

I was determined to have it out with the Bulsons. 
Flesh and blood could stand their stony observation 
no longer. Up to a given point Moses himself 
compared unfavourably with me in meekness, and 
Job was nowhere in patience; but beyond that 
point my anger outburned the mumbling and stut- 
tering wrath of those ancients, and made a way for 
itself like fire in a dry haystack. I will not tarry 
for a daintier figure — haystack will do. 

*^ Mr. and Mrs. Bulson," said I, *' you have often 
advised me to be more observant." 

*' That is true, sir ; we think it specially impor- 
tant that a pastor should keep his eyes wide open. 
We think it would help him in his sermons very 
much." 

'' In what way, Mrs. Bulson ? " I inquired. 

*^ By making them more practical," she answered. 
'' I like practical preaching. I think a pastor should 
go more and more to the point. He should let the 
people know that his eyes are upon them, and that 
when they are least expecting it he is looking them 
through and through, and almost reading their very 
thoughts." 

"You quite cheer me, Mrs. Bulson," said I, and 
turning to Mr. Bulson, I added, '' Are you of the 
same opinion? " 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 213 

" Distinctly so/' he promptly replied ; " if pastors 
were more faithful, people would be more profited. 
But how can pastors be faithful if they are not ob- 
servant? How can they speak if they will not 
look ? I have no wish, my dear sir, to pain your 
feelings, but I certainly think, and my wife also 
thinks, that you ought to observe your people and 
their ways, shall I say more punctiliously ? '' 

*' But,'' I added, '* you would not recommend 
personal preaching? " 

** I certainly should," Mr. Bulson replied. *' Per- 
sonal preaching is what that congregation requires. 
I distinctly urge you to be personal. Do not waste 
your time in generalities." 

*^ Why not be personal? " Mrs. Bulson cheerfully 
interposed. 

** Because the people might take offence," I said. 

"Let them," the Bulsons answered; "so much 
the better. Faithful dealing is what they want. 
That would soon waken them up and bring them 
to their senses. If I was a minister," continued 
Mr. Bulson, " I would let 'em have it hot, nerves or 
no nerves." 

" Then you would support me if I took this 
course? " I timidly inquired. 

"Out and out," said Mr. Bulson; "and let me 
see a man in that congregation who would hurt a 
hair of your head." 

" But the women ? " I interrogatively suggested. 

" Leave them to me," Mrs. Bulson replied. " For 
twenty-two years we have sat in that chapel. 
Many of the tradesmen are only too glad to have 



214 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

our custom, because they know that with us it is 
money down '' 

** Money down,'* Bulson interposed. 

" And they cannot afford to snap their fingers at 
us, and, in fact, they will be only too glad to take 
their cue from us." 

All this could hardly fail to be satisfactory to 
me ; it was so nobly conceived, and so magnani- 
mously expressed. It was the very music of the 
Gospel sweetly brought down to the humblest 
channels of domestic and neighbourly life. Now 
came my chance. The clock struck, and Destiny 
stood forth. 

Said I, '' Mr. and Mrs. Bulson, I did not feel at 
liberty to move without your sanction " (there I 
scored visibly), " so, before entering upon my new 
and perilous course, I thought I would read a few 
sermon notes for your approval'' (another bull's- 
eye). " May I solicit your best attention? " 

"Certainly," said they both. 

" My sermon is on the duty of cultivating the art 
of mutual observation. 

*' Capital! " exclaimed Mr. Bulson. 

" I like it being called an art," said his wife. " It 
seems to give it more importance." 

"And to bring it up to the times," said Mr. Bul- 
son ; " but we interrupt our pastor; pray proceed." 

I then read this note : " There is a family in this 
church I must specially rebuke " 

" That's a stinger," said Bulson. " Pardon." 

" The people to whom I refer bring discredit on 
the Christian name. For no service of charity are 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 215 

they known. The poor and the sick they never 
visit. Poverty has no reason to thank them. Weak- 
ness can never bless them. For old age they have 
no staff. For childhood they have no smile. For 
sorrow they have no sympathy. And for these 
reasons I publicly rebuke the occupants of pew 
No. 13, Mr. and Mrs. Bulson.'' 

Before the following Sunday pew No. 13 was 
cleared of cushions and hassocks. I ** observed *' 
that fact. 



NOTE XXXV. 

A SUBURBAN pastorate ! My friend Mr. Wash- 
ington, though too robust to be unsettled by idle 
fancies, or seduced into self-indulgence by morbid 
sentiment, had sighed for such a pastorate as a happy 
release from the clouded and restless city in which he 
had ministered for twenty years. He longed to es- 
cape from the tumult and roar of crowded thorough- 
fares, and to enjoy the silence and contemplative- 
ness of country life, specially of country life on 
Sundays^ when the quiet of rural scenery is hushed 
into a deeper calm, and made to harmonise with 
the peaceful joy which trembles in the good man's 
heart. I]did not wonder at his passion for the coun- 
try, because he had the trained ear which quickly 
hears the going of God in the paths of Nature, and 
the penetrating eye which sees more than the mere 
letters which are written on the earth and sky. God 
had made him a deep interpreter of natural signs, 
and given him that enriching gift of amplification 
and ideal development by which poets are able to 
make for themselves new heavens and a new earth. 
He walked as a free man in the most charming 
haunts of Nature ; he knew the voices of the birds, 
and was famihar with the names of many trees and 
plants. Like an ardent lover, he never tired of the 
sunny scene, and long after phlegmatic observers 
had exhausted its attractions, some new blush 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 217 

caught his watchful eyes, or some winged minstrel 
detained him to listen to a wordless song. That 
such a man had a desire for a suburban pastorate is 
easily imaginable, and therefore, though too rever- 
ent to force the gate which separated him from the 
enchanting land, Mr. Washington would gladly 
have assisted a higher hand than his own in open- 
ing it. To a fancy so fertile as his, there were many 
urgent allurements ; the church on the hillside ; 
happy families trooping from all directions to the 
house of the One Father ; the book of revelation 
illustrated by the book of Nature ; opportunity 
for self-introversion ; and that refinement of spiri- 
tual education which to some men is almost im- 
possible amid scenes which incessantly strain their 
activities — all these things charmed and tempted 
him, and at length brought him into bondage. Why 
not ? Is it not hard for the poetic mind to dismiss 
the idea of an intermediate heaven — a quiet and 
sunny place just on the borderland, lying between 
the great Shadow and the greater Light ? To such 
a mind it seems a long way to heaven from the 
thronged streets through which Mammon drives its 
sweltering 'votaries, and but a step from the flowery 
and fragrant landscape to the City of Peace. So it 
appeared to Matthew Washington, and he desired 
its realisation, though he had not lost one impulse 
of his generous humanity ; his pitying heart had 
not been chilled or shrivelled. So sure was I of this, 
that I had a deep conviction that he would carry 
with him all his city memories, and that they would 
very probably add a thorn or two to the tempting 
rose which he was so eager to pluck. 



2i8 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

In talking over his experiences in a suburban pas- 
torate, Mr. Washington gave me a little insight into 
that intermediate heaven of which he had been dream- 
ing for many a day, and as it is quite lawful to utter 
everything I heard about that murky and deceitful 
sky, I shall take the public into my confidence, and 
interpret the vision of a few kindred dreamers. 

Mr. Washington told me that he never knew what 
respectability was until he saw it in the suburbs. 
He had been accustomed to its presence in the 
city, doing its business, eating its public dinner, 
buying its penny-worth of literature, and pleasantly 
mixing with all the varieties of personality and cos- 
tume which go to the making up of a city crowd. 
This was quite familiar to him. But when he saw 
respectability away from its mixed and softening 
surroundings, when its decorations were prominently 
displayed, and it seemed to have written out its 
claims after the manner of a bill of particulars, he 
told me that his first sensation was that of intense 
coldness ; he shivered as if a hand of ice had sud- 
denly touched him, and looked round for the old kind 
friendships which had often made him glow with 
love to the whole world. When the broadcloth, the 
kid gloves, the jewellery, and fancy decorations are 
more prominent than the man ; when the shell is 
exaggerated to a maximum, and the soul is confined 
to a small dark corner, it is not to be wondered at 
that guileless and earnest men are conscious of a 
change of climate which threatens their very ex- 
istence. No respectability of culture, of nobleness, 
of benevolence, could have been too refined or too 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 219 

conspicuous for Matthew Washington. He would 
never have complained of this; he would rather 
have revelled and gloried in it with exceeding 
appreciation and thankfulness. But when respec- 
tability exhausted itself in cabinet-making, uphol- 
stery, and tailoring, he shrank from it as from an 
effigy which he had mistaken for a living friend. 

In the suburb which Mr. Washington had chosen 
as the scene of his ministry, there were forests of 
mahogany, whole potteries of elegant ware, and 
nearly every house had a fancy bazaar of its own. 
To his unconventional mind it seemed that there 
must be quite a dearth of household articles in the 
rest of the world, and that his suburb had laid itself 
open to a just charge of voracious and heartless 
monopoly. The influence of this oppressive respec- 
tability was felt everywhere — on the road,^in the 
house, at school, but specially and cruelly in the 
sanctuary. Mr. Washington was very earnest in 
his manner of speaking about this ; it was the chief 
difficulty of his pastorate, and he chafed under it 
without any attempt to conceal his pain. He felt 
that he was expected to determine his sermons by 
the local standard of respectability ; he was to 
preach quite as much to the mahogany as to the 
men ; he was to think of the Turkey carpets in his 
exposition, and to remember the porcelain in his 
peroration. The idol was constantly before him, 
clipping the wings of his fancy, cooling the fervour 
of his passion, and whispering with cold breath : 
" Sir, look at me, and mind your manners ! " To a 
man of Washington's make this was intolerable. 



220 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

He suffered patiently for awhile, but at last the soul 
made a way for itself, and delivered a startling and 
burning testimony. The earnest witness had, of 
course, to reap the consequences of his temerity; 
several seat-holders protested, a few besought him to 
return to his ^* beautiful " sermons, and an indignant 
boarding-school abandoned the desecrated place for 
ever. Were they not right? Is it a proper thing 
to let loose a whirlwind upon a genteel suburb ? 
Is it becoming or agreeable to thunder the terrors 
of the Lord in the hearing of rate-payers who keep 
three servants each, and sneer at every house which 
has less than four rooms on the groundfloor ? Here 
was Mr. Washington's error — in not discriminating 
between the rough and worthless creatures who 
occupy the ungainly city, and the genteel and peer- 
less lives that keep up the respectability of the 
nation. His hearers required doctrine without con- 
troversy, a lavish interspersion of rhyming couplets, 
and a loving assurance that, whatever became of the 
rest of the world, they themselves only wanted 
wings to become beautiful and happy as angels. 
This would have met their modest expectations, 
and secured their well-regulated applause. Instead 
of this, their bold and ardent pastor committed the 
unpardonable impertinence of metaphorically dis- 
missing their coachman, setting fire to their mahog- 
any, sending back their ornaments to the gold- 
smith, and talking to their souls the pure and 
revolutionary language of the gospel. This ** sort 
of thing '' would have done admirably for the peo- 
ple who spend their Sundays under the city cloud, 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 221 

but was insufferable to the human nature that kept 
gigs, and formed intelligent opinions upon the pre- 
vailing fashions. When human nature keeps a gig, 
and is sufficiently refined to discriminate between 
one perfume and another, it is only proper that its 
theology should be at least abreast of its civilisa- 
tion. The Ten Commandments must subdue their 
tone, the Sermon on the Mount must be republished 
with the emendations of every alternate sentence, 
and the New Testament must be bound in vellum, 
and so arranged that it opens most easily at the 
precious promises. Let this be done, and the 
world will enter into rest. A certain Dean once 
asked, ^* Why is not an attempt made to get rid 
of religion?" and the bold interrogator added: 
'* Men of the world must find it a great plague. It 
robs them of one day in the week, as far as out- 
ward business is concerned. It obliges them to 
submit to, and bear part in, a great deal of what 
they must feel to be atrocious humbug.** If the 
Dean had talked the matter over with Mr. Wash- 
ington, he would have learned that in some suburbs 
"religion '' had been most genteelly entombed, and 
that a guard had been set lest any of its fanatical 
believers should attempt to take it away. Men 
" get rid of religion '' more respectably by chloro- 
form than by a poleaxe. 

Pedantic respectability was not the only difficulty 
with which Mr. Washington had to contend. Along- 
side of it, so to speak, there stood a grim opponent, 
properly called Sciolism, Every one in the con- 
gregation seemed to know a little about sorne out-of- 



222 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

the-way subject ; not one had drunk deeply at the 
Pierian spring, but all had tasted its delicious waters. 
Mr. Washington's church became like an incipient 
university, wanting nothing but genius and learning 
to make it almost moderately respectable. Every 
household had its hobby, and every child felt him- 
self at liberty to put Mr. Washington through ^' the 
larger catechism with proofs." Mr. Washington 
thus came by some strange experiences, not with- 
out instruction to the rising ministry. One family, 
for example, proud of a garden thirteen feet by 
seven, had undertaken the study of botany, and 
had duly classified a guinea's worth of plants into 
Phanerogameae and Cryptogameae. Mr. Washing- 
ton amiably admired the happy distribution, and 
thought he was coming off with flying colours, 
when a young lady, in her thirteenth year, utterly 
humbled him by asking whether the Primula fart- 
nosa belonged to the epiphytic or parasitic series of 
plants? Of course the young lady herself knew, 
and of course her heart struggled between pity and 
contempt as she looked upon her uncultivated and 
plebeian pastor. The famous "' schoolboy " to 
whom Lord Macaulay so often and so flatteringly 
refers (unknown, however, to all the world except 
the omnivorous baron himself), would have answered 
the trifling question instantly, but the unmannerly 
Washington bluntly replied that he knew nothing 
about it. The blunder had serious consequences — 
the young lady could never comfortably place her- 
self under the guidance of so ignorant a pastor. 
Another family had taken up the science of geology 



« 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 223 

with consuming ardour. The importance of a 
knowledge of the structure of the earth was para- 
mount : no man was fit to live who was not deeply 
versed in palaeontology and mineralogy, or who did 
not know the difference between an argillaceous 
rock and a mammaliferous crag. This was the noble 
creed of the amateur geologists ; from morning till 
night their inspiring talk was about fossils, speci- 
mens, and remains ; every mantelpiece in the house 
bore some sign of felspars, hornblendes, micas, and 
zeolites ; every child who had escaped long clothes 
had heard something of lamination, interstratifi- 
cation, and lateral variation ; the proud parents, 
blinded by the dazzling genius of their offspring, 
glowed with admiring and speechless love as they 
heard their youngest son expatiate upon the con- 
temporaneity of beds, and the distinction between 
anticlinal and synclinal curves. Poor Mr. Wash- 
ington was '^ nowhere " on this deep subject ; but 
he little knew the blankness and culpability of his 
ignorance, until a youngster, in the act of finishing 
a muffin, asked him if he could tell when the Juras- 
sic period ended and the Cretaceous period began. 
The union of such splendid intellect with so ordi- 
nary and useful an accomplishment, while it intoxi- 
cated the parents with delight, filled the pastor 
with humiliating dismay. Other families had their 
favourite pursuits — astronomy, ethnology, history, 
chemistry, and even ontology in all its abysmal 
profundity and hazy amplitude ; but the most con- 
spicuous instance of scientific devotion was repre- 
sented by a little company of three families, num- 



224 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

bering on an average of six members each, associated 
for the purpose of studying music. As the improve- 
ment of congregational psalmody was one of the 
subordinate objects of the association, Mr. Washing- 
ton was occasionally invited to attend the meetings. 

My reverend friend was soon distracted by sub- 
tle discussions about dispersed harmony, dominant 
sevenths, and the percussion of dissonances — the 
last being forcibly illustrated by two eloquent 
ladies. Mr. Washington was, of course, delighted 
with the rare accomplishments of his people. He 
said so ; said so with hearty and generous emphasis ; 
said so again and again, as if he had nothing else to 
say ; his only wonder was that, with eighteen such 
brilliant singers in his comparatively small congre- 
gation, the singing was not of a higher type ; 
though he was bound to acknowledge, in common 
fairness, that since the association was founded he 
had heard of several of its eighteen members sing- 
ing a common metre tune or two in a genteelly 
mumbling sort of style so perfectly scientific and 
refined that not a soul could hear them at the dis- 
tance of more than four inches. 

With all this pedantic respectability, and still 
more pedantic sciolism, there was, of course, a good 
deal that was unnatural in the spirit and habits of 
the people. Everything was done by rule ; every- 
body was secretly endeavouring to find out ** the 
correct thing," and was determined to do it, what- 
ever pain it might involve. 

To have made a morning call before three o'clock 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 225 

would have degraded the caste of the oldest inhab- 
itant ; to have shaken, with anything like cordiality, 
the hand of the most intimate friend, would have 
damaged the most established reputation ; and to 
have laughed heartily would have blighted the 
fairest prospects of life. It was, of course, forbid- 
den that anything even remotely approaching sur- 
prise should be expressed ; a comet was to be 
looked at in a most composed manner, a total 
eclipse of the sun was to be regarded as a common- 
place affair, no notice was to be taken of so trifling 
an event as an earthquake ; and as for shipwrecks, 
railway collisions, and colliery explosions, to have 
so much as named them would have plunged the 
excited newsmonger into the depths of vulgarity. 
This frigidity chilled Mr. Washington to the core ; 
it chilled his sermons ; and, worst of all, it chilled 
his prayers — those great prayers, so rich, so simple, so 
wise ! He still had the solace of God's fair field of 
Nature, and he enjoyed it to the full. Early in the 
morning he worshipped in the waving woods, and 
carried forward the sweet song of birds to a higher 
devotion ; great Nature was kind to him as a wel- 
coming mother, opening many a hidden door to his 
appreciative eyes, and adding many a modest and 
pleasant acquaintance to the long list of his quiet 
friendships within the circle of the wood. As a 
thinker who worked rather from the spiritual centre 
than from the base of information, his field rambles 
were very helpful to him ; his mind was quieted and 
toned by the most potent yet gentle influences, and 
he gathered in those lonely rambles the vivid and 



226 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

truthful images which gave to his writings the liv- 
ing charm which allures the busiest reader to their 
close. 

Yes ; we owe Matthew Washington's writings 
very largely to his suburbanism. When he w^as in 
the city he wTOte hurriedly, merely hinting at his 
subjects, and never doing himself justice either as 
a thinker or as a writer. It was enough for him to 
throw out an idea in its boldest form ; he almost 
despised artistic garniture and studious elaboration 
— there was the idea, what more could people pos- 
sibly require ? The consequence was that a cer- 
tain class of sectarian reviewers handled him very 
roughly ; they described his style as jagged, abrupt, 
almost coarse, and one reviewer so far patronised 
him as to say, ** Mr. Washington is improving." 
How these words made me tingle and burn with 
anger ! Washington himself merely smiled at them. 

"Why, sir," said I, ^' it were better to be cursed 
outright than to have such dead praise ! " 

I cannot forget the beaming of his face as he 
listened to this burst of youthful enthusiasm. 

*^ It is being cursed outright," he answered, "if 
you did but understand it; the writer of these 
words means to sink me with a heavy compliment." 

I did not comprehend the sentiment then, but it 
has since come to have a clearer meaning. When 
Mr. Washington went into the suburbs, he plea- 
santly said he would " try to spin better " ; it was 
like him to speak thus modestly. There was reso- 
lution in the words, though they were so simple 
and unpretending; how far they were fulfilled is 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 227 

known only to those who were made acquainted 
with the extent of his anonymous writings. I 
never knew any man*s style undergo a greater 
change. Where it was short, edged, and rasping, 
it became flowing, persuasive, and conciliatory ; and 
where once it would have but pointed a directing 
finger, it now revelled exultingly over the whole 
space which the writer*s thought was intended to 
occupy. In addition to many essays upon some of 
the deepest problems in theology, he indulged in 
repeated excursions into more cheerful districts of 
literature, and enriched the serials of the day with 
many an airy dream and tuneful lyric, of whose 
authorship the noisy world never knew. He has 
listened to praises of his writings by men who never 
would have looked at them had they known their 
author, but not once did he yield to the pleasant 
temptation to say **/ wrote them.*' He heard the 
verdict, and his reward for years of hard schooling 
was enough to satisfy him. I wanted] to publish 
his claims as an author ; but he reminded me that 
silence is older than speech, and that fame is better 
for the dead than the living. I disputed this, and 
flattered myself that my logic was better than his. 

" Why, sir,'' said I, *' is not fame but another 
name for influence ? and is not every one bound to 
increase his influence to the farthest possible 
exent ? " 

^'Possibly so," he replied; '^but where an 
author's discovered personality might substitute 
aversion for applause, he might diminish his influ- 
ence by attempting to augment it." 



228 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

''On the other hand," I ventured to rejoin, "is 
it not probable that in many instances the force of 
prejudice might be broken, and men be brought to 
own their mistake and repair it? " 

*' Now and again such a conversion would proba- 
bly occur," he admitted ; " but taking a wide view 
of life, I beUeve that it is better not to risk the 
influence of the thought by disclosing too early the 
personality of the thinker ; that is, if his personal- 
ity be in any way likely to excite prejudice. What 
does a moment's popularity amount to? Let a 
man give his name at last, if it so please him, for 
death is the best answer to prejudice — a stern and 
terrible answer, I admit." 

With these views Matthew Washington con- 
tinued his literary visor to the end. Never was 
workman more punctually at his post than was 
Washington at his desk. He wrote with his heart 
as well as with his hand ; and though I was hon- 
oured with his confidence for years, I never heard 
him say that any paragraph of his own fully satis- 
fied his critical judgment. He could have improved 
a word, or strengthened a sentence, or burnished 
an image, or filed off an asperity, or done some- 
thing which perhaps nobody else ever thought was 
in any degree necessary or desirable. My fear was 
that his suburbanism was making him too finical, 
and that for the old abrupt vigour he would sub- 
stitute an insipid refinement. Happily my fear 
proved to be unfounded, for though the change in 
his style of expression was most marked, the pun- 
gency and strength of his thought escaped deterio- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 229 

ration. His literary pursuits saved him from the 
melancholy which upon such a temperament as his 
would have been superinduced by suburbanism ; 
he had a secret world all to himself, a world bright 
with stars and beautiful with many flowers, and in 
this world he found bread to eat of which his sub- 
urban friends did not know. Yet there was a 
grief darkening and depressing the good man's 
heart ; and that grief arose from the fact that his 
people looked upon suburbanism as a providential 
exoneration from a good deal of the hard work 
which falls to the lot of what may be called city 
Christianity. The poor^ being out of sight, were to 
a large extent also out of mind. Sunday-school 
service was unknown ; tract distribution would have 
been an elaborate insult ; open-air preaching would 
have brought eternal disgrace upon the whole 
suburb ; and any other form of work would have 
ruined the reputation of its projector. Religion 
soon becomes a superstition when it ceases to be a 
practice ; and in proportion as the second command- 
ment is neglected, the first commandment becomes 
the occasion of the most corrupt selfishness — neces- 
sarily so, for reverence without benevolence destroys 
the universality of relationship which stimulates 
and strengthens the best affections of human 
nature. To do the simplest work is to save religion 
from the most aggravated misanthropy. For a man 
to light his last candle, and set it in the window of his 
cot, with the hope that its ray may catch the eager 
eye of the struggling mariner, who would "give the 
world for light, is to please God more than to per- 



^30 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

form the most stately ceremony, as if the earth 
were no longer the abode of suffering humanity. 
True, we must not forsake the temple ; but, equally 
true, we must not neglect the disabled man who lies 
daily at its most beautiful gate. It is not denied 
that the picture of suburbanism now drawn is pur- 
posely exaggerated, but it is solemnly afifirmed 
that there is enough of reality in it to demand the 
serious consideration of all who wish to do the work 
which Jesus Christ undertook throughout the whole 
of His ministry. No doubt the city is less plea- 
sant than the green country ; no doubt the elegant 
sanctuary is more agreeable than the great meet- 
ing-house which stands in the thoroughfare of an 
ill-kept town ; no doubt there is a powerful charm 
in select society. All this is freely admitted. But 
when the whole case is viewed from the Cross of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot but hope that there 
will be a nearly complete inversion of the effects of 
suburbanism ; surely the happy day will come when 
the members of Christian families w^ll say to one 
another, as regularly as the dawning of the Sabbath, 
"We have enjoyed during the week many of the 
sweet and healthful blessings of the country ; let us 
go to-day to visit in Christ's name and for Christ's 
good purposes the great city, that we may teach 
little children, that we may relieve and cheer the 
poor, and that we may support the ministers who 
witness for Christ under many discouragements.*' 
Such a holy resolution would add keener relish to 
the enjoyments of the whole week, it would glad- 
den many cheerless lives, and give robustness to the 
finest graces of the soul. 



NOTE XXXVI. 

My Dear Mr. Stead, 

I thank you very warmly for calling my at- 
tention to your notes upon Spiritual Communica- 
tion, which you have published in the Christmas 
number of your Review, I am glad to be able to ac- 
cept your statement without the faintest shadow of 
reserve as to its literal accuracy, because you have 
given me evidence which makes scepticism impossi- 
ble. For my own part, I am not so much inter- 
ested in communications from friends, relatives, old 
colleagues, and others as you seem to be. I ac- 
knowledge that, were such communication possible, 
it would be the most fascinating and absorbing oc- 
cupation to trace it out in its minutest detail, and 
to publish it to the world as something almost 
equivalent to a Gospel. I cannot but feel, how- 
ever, that all the endeavours which are made to 
realise the spiritual world are endeavours which 
cannot end, in themselves, with any real advantage 
to anybody. What does it amount to that a man 
has had a message from his uncle or aunt? Of 
what consequence is it that some ghostly presence 
has drawn pictures, or some spectral influence has 
written letters, or made lines upon a slate, or given 
some other token and sign of nearness and interest? 
Even if all this were literally true, in my judgment 



232 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

it amounts to nothing unless we can carry the 
matter very much further. 

For myself, I have no difficulty in believing that 
all stances, all inquiries of the kind you indicate/all 
earnest endeavours to test the reality of the spiri- 
tual, represent so much groping after God Himself. 
** God is a Spirit.*' If men were to give themselves 
might and main to an inquiry concerning God, I 
should regard that inquiry as expressing the deepest 
interest in true spiritualism. Why be anxious to 
talk to the servant when we can get access to the 
Master Himself? Why talk to the sentry at the 
door when we can advance into the very presence- 
chamber of the Monarch? It seems to me that a 
congregation, properly regulated, ought to consti- 
tute the largest and most effective seance possible. 
I do not look upon a congregation merely as a 
public mob or a miscellaneous gathering of unrelated 
atoms and particles. I look upon it as a consti- 
tuted medium or organisation through which the 
Most High can communicate present-day revela- 
tions. Of course, if congregations will not lift up 
their thoughts to this high level they cannot ex- 
pect to receive visions from God. If they have 
merely assembled promiscuously to take only the 
interest of curiosity in what is going on, they will 
deprive themselves of all the richest advantages. I 
should hold, therefore, that the letter which you 
were enabled to write by some kind of spiritual in- 
fluence is not for a moment to be compared in 
living interest, nor for the highest purposes, as equal 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 233 

to what we find written in the Bible. In so far as 
the Bible is inspired, it is a collection of books, 
letters, exhortations, and criticisms direct from 
God. Then, why be adding postscripts? Why 
be concerning ourselves with inane and pointless 
letters simply because they are written in some sort 
of automatic fashion? For my own part, I put 
prayer as the true medium of communication with 
the Divine, and I have no hesitation in giving it as 
my testimony that prayer, when unselfish, is an- 
swered immediately and fully by God Himself. 

I cannot make light of the suggestion that in- 
spiration is a present-day fact. I believe that men 
may now receive direct messages from God. From 
my point of view, inspiration neither began with 
the Sacred Canon nor closed with it. It is the very 
life of God in the universe ; it is the voice of God 
to the human soul. We can test it by ascertaining 
how far it introduces the element of moral disci- 
pline into the education of man. In the absence of 
such discipline — penetrating, searching, and inclu- 
sive — so-called inspiration will be mere enthusiasm 
or frenzy, worth nothing in itself, and incapable of 
doing anything in the best interests of society. 
Discipline is the test of revelation. The Bible not 
only makes great revelations of the future and of 
destiny, but it imposes upon the present daily 
tasks, daily criticism, daily responsibility. It is in 
this element of discipline that I find the real indica- 
tion of Biblical passion and enthusiasm. Were we 
to live more thoroughly the Divine life, we should 



234 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

mord deeply read the Bible itself. We do not want 
a new Bible ; we want a new reading of the old 
Bible. Everything is in that deep and ever-living 
root. Branches and stems, twigs and blossoms, may 
change, but the root itself abides forever. I have 
no difficulty in regarding daily events as God's daily 
Bible published to the world. I have no faith in 
the piety that excludes the Divine element from 
journalism. John Wesley used to say that he read 
the journals to see how God was governing the 
world. I find in every day's events a new chapter 
of Divine providence. It would be no merely 
poetic fancy or conceit to regard each single day as 
a world in itself, revealing the whole drama of 
human experience in all its tragedy and comedy, in 
all its high lights, in all its complications, in all its 
agonies and joys. My religion enables me to see 
the spiritual element at work in all daily history. 
I do not shut up God within the covers of the Bible. 
He is at work now in every country under the sun. 
Of course, there appears to be a great deal of tumult 
and incoherence, rioting and madness ; but after a 
due lapse of time, we shall find that the great Spirit 
has been working out a sublime and beneficent 
issue. 

Is there not a possibility of turning a great idea 
to mean and unworthy uses? Are there not Spiri- 
tualists who make a living by their mediumship? 
Personally, I do not see any objection even to this 
use of a great spiritual faculty. Because a great 
inspiration can be abused, it does not follow that a 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 235 

great inspiration is impossible. We ought not to 
confine our attention to incidental degradations ; 
we should look, rather, at the highest possibilities 
of the case. I have met with several Spiritualists, 
and have been struck by their personal earnestness. 
One or two of the godliest men I have ever known 
were simply infatuated by Spiritualism. Other men 
have been sober-minded, earnest, simple, and 
straightforward in all their supposed realisations of 
the highest forces. Mr. Irving Bishop was a fre- 
quent visitor at my house. He laid no claim to 
anything in the line of Spiritualism. He said he 
could not explain his own actions ; in some cases 
he was neither afraid nor ashamed to call them 
tricks. A great scientific authority told him that 
many of his eccentric and marvellous actions were 
due to what he called ^^ unconscious cerebration," 
by which, I suppose, he meant some unconscious 
action of the brain which did not fall within the 
ascertained lines of mental science. I have seen 
Mr. Irving Bishop discover hidden things, find out 
words that were written and sealed up in envelopes, 
and so far follow the thinking of a subject as to be 
able to give names, figures, letters, and the like as 
they were communicated from the brain of the sub- 
ject to his own brain. All this was very striking, 
but what did it amount to ? I have also seen Mr. 
Stuart Cumberland, who went very much upon the 
lines of Mr. Irving Bishop. Mr. Cumberland made 
no pretence to Spiritualism or supernaturalism. 
He acted like an honest and straightforward man. 
He frankly confessed that he could do nothing un- 



236 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

less with the full consent and co-operation of the 
subject. Yet he did some very notable things. 
For example, he told Mr. W. S. Gilbert to think of 
the name which he would forge ; then to think of 
the sum for which he would draw a cheque ; and 
then to think of the name of the place on the map 
to which he would fly for refuge in the case of sus- 
picion or detection. This was surely a very compli- 
cated task. Mr. Cumberland did it — did it imme- 
diately, and did it perfectly. No doubt this was 
wonderful. No doubt a rogue could make a great 
deal out of the exercise of such a faculty ; but Mr. 
Stuart Cumberland simply said that he believed 
every mental action had its corresponding physical 
indications, and it was by the out-working of these 
indications that his hand transferred to the black- 
board the impressions that were written upon the 
brain of the subject with whom he was co-operat- 
ing. This again, I repeat, is very striking ; at the 
same time, one cannot but ask, What is the use of 
it ? What does it amount to ? Is it not merely a 
very curious trick, and nothing more ? 

Now, it is not so with regard to the Divine 
Spirituality to which I would respectfully call your 
attention. When God acts directly, and vitally, 
and inspiringly upon the human soul, that great ac- 
tion all comes out in a pure, noble, and beneficent 
light. Thus we come to the real test of the efficacy 
of such inspiration. When inspiration, so called, 
ends in nothing but amazement or amusement, it is 
not Divine inspiration ; when it ends in high- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 237 

mindedness, in sympathy, and in loving service to 
others, it is an inspiration which has come immedi- 
ately from God. 

Inspiration will come to different men in different 
ways. Holy men of old spake as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost. They did not know what they 
were going to say. The prophets probably did not 
understand one tithe of what they uttered. They 
were literally and in very deed the media through 
whom God spoke His word to the world. When 
the disciples were warned that they should be 
brought before judgment-seats, Christ told them 
not to give any thought to the matter of their own 
defence, because He promised them that in the 
same hour it should be given them what they 
should say. Now, this power we have lost. We 
nov/ preach with the words which men's wisdom 
teacheth. The Apostle Paul declared that he never 
preached in that way, but that he preached under 
the immediate inspiration and direction of the 
Spirit. It is forgotten that this is the age of the 
Holy Ghost. No longer is there any visible Christ, 
no longer is there any visible Cross. In a sense, 
the whole letter and the framework of original 
Christianity have been superseded by the action, 
invisible and direct, of the Spirit. Not that the old 
history has to be surrendered or denied, or even 
modified, but it now stands in a new and distinct 
relation to the vital progress of the world. The 
letter has given place to the spirit, though the 
letter itself still exists, and must always exist, as a 



238 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

help to those who are at a certain point of religious 
education. 

I believe that preaching should be an act of in- 
spiration. I am not now speaking of verbal exege- 
sis. For verbal criticism arduous study will always 
be necessary. Nor am I making any plea for men- 
tal indolence. If any man shall say that he will 
take no thought what he will preach, but will stand 
up and let the Holy Spirit speak through him, the 
probability is that the man will not be accepted as 
an instrument through whom Heaven will speak. 
The preaching that I now indicate is not the result 
of indolence or unconcern. The preparation will 
only be altered ; it will not be lessened. The man 
who is going to preach under the influence of Di- 
vine inspiration must live every day with God ; he 
must lift up his thoughts to the very highest level, 
must banish everything from his environment that 
would vitiate his taste, narrow his sympathies, or 
create even an almost unconscious selfishness. He 
must be sanctified — that is, set apart for a special 
work, and must so live that God will accept him as 
a fit instrument for His use in revealing the Divine 
will. 

I will ask you to pardon me for trespassing at this 
length upon your attention and your patience. I 
thank you for all you have done in this matter of 
Spiritualism ; but I venture to submit to you that 
all you have done is but alphabetic and elementary, 
and that it ought to be no surprise to you or to 
any one else that communication between the 
worlds is possible. The Bible has been teaching 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 239 

this during all the centuries of its existence. It is 
not a truth outside the Church, but inside the 
Church, and upon the very centre of the altar of 
the Church. The Church ought not to look upon 
Spiritualism when the processes are honestly con- 
ducted with any but a friendly eye, because the 
Church well knows that every step in that direction 
means advancement towards the sublime fact that 
** God is a Spirit,'* and that He is willing to com- 
municate every day with the spirits of those who 
wait upon Him in faith and love. 



NOTE XXXVII. 

When I look at the hardships of my own com- 
paratively obscure lot, I cannot but wonder what 
must be the distraction and the suffering of men 
who are in exceptionally high public life. In limit- 
ing my remarks to my own case, I am merely 
guarding other men from the suspicion of having 
sought in me an advocate or a representative. My 
own postal burdens are more than enough for my 
spare strength. I could cope with the number of 
the letters better than with the variety of their con- 
tents. I say nothing of begging letters, often too 
full of anguish to be within the reach of sympathy, 
or of anonymous letters, not one word of which do 
I ever read ; nor do I at this moment make any ac- 
count of those literary cuttings sent by delicate- 
minded friends who are afraid lest, by the omission 
of one chastisement, a minister should be exalted 
above measure. 

A stranger writes that he is engaged to read a 
paper before a literary society upon the '^Arianism 
of the Fourth Century," and asks if I would mind 
''jotting down " a few particulars, and referring 
him to one or two high authorities. The same post 
brings an anxious inquiry respecting the right and 
the wrong of the practice of dancing in Christian 
families, with a request for reply by return of post, 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 241 

The next letter, running to ten sheets of closely- 
written note-paper, discusses the question of land, 
landlords, and ground-rents, and demands whether 
the time has not fully come when ministers should 
rouse themselves from their criminal lethargy and 
" sound the tocsin *' of something or other which is 
beyond the range of my daily studies. The ex- 
cited writer says he addresses me on " the ground 
of our common patriotism,*' and awaits my response 
with *^the courage of despair." Whilst I keep him 
waiting I open the next letter, which piteously en- 
treats me to give my views upon the subject of the 
eternal torment of the impenitent, and encloses a 
post-card for an immediate reply. Another corre- 
spondent assures me that his family might be com- 
pared to a bear-garden in consequence of divided 
feeling upon the subject of theatre-going, and, ut- 
terly regardless of his metaphor, he politely invites 
me to '* step forward and pour oil on the troubled 
waters.'' 

Is there any redress for public men under such 
circumstances? Those correspondents — and they 
are the majority— who do not enclose stamped and 
addressed envelopes are always most sensitive to 
neglect. Some of those thoughtful gentlemen read 
me severe lectures upon **the common courtesies 
of life," in utter forgetfulness of the fact that the 
lack of courtesy is on their side, and not on mine. 
I am not sure that editors will thank me for the 
suggestion I am about to make, yet it strikes me 
as the best possible course under the circumstances 



242 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

— that such correspondents should write to the 
papers. I would spare the minister by taxing the 
editor, if it were not for the fact that some editors 
are themselves the greatest culprits that ministers 
have to guard against. Certain minor editors have 
invented a new outrage. Their idea is to write to 
public men for opinions upon the questions of the 
day. As, for example, What do you think of the 
proposal to make Mr. Gladstone the Pope of Rome? 
and, What do you think of the attempt to make 
the Archbishop of Canterbury into a Dissenting 
minister? and, What would become of St. Paul's 
Cathedral in the event of Disestablishment? I ob- 
serve, however, with satisfaction that in very few 
cases do the most representative ministers allow 
themselves to be thus victimised. There are un- 
doubtedly some subjects upon which a useful cor- 
respondence of this kind might be developed — my 
attention is turned in another and very different 
direction, and I believe many are guarding them- 
selves against this species of complimentary felony. 
May I say how I relieve my own burdens a little? 
First of all, as I have just said, anonymous letters 
are at once thrown into the fire. Secondly, letters 
beginning in the style of '' Dear brother and fellow- 
sinner " are deposited in the waste-paper basket. 
Thirdly, all letters from strangers that do not state 
their business in the first sentence are laid aside 
until *^ a more convenient season." Thus I treat the 
first sort as contemptible, the second as misdirected, 
and the third as insincere. Under a less drastic 
policy I should not have lived to tell the tale. 



NOTE XXXVIII. 

September once more, and at work again next 
Sunday ! It is impossible. These autumnal months 
do not come, as in youth, on leaden feet as if with 
surly reluctance, but on strong eager wings, as if 
they would all come together if they could and 
round off life's anxieties in the very act of their 
deepening into despair. Whilst the plough stands 
in mid-furrow, I want to think a moment or two 
about the service and mystery of sowing and reap- 
ing. The whole work comes to so little visibly, or 
in any way that can be handled, yet, happily, we 
cannot tell what garnering may be going on in 
eternity. We may be reaping when we little think 
of it, for even in the darkness there are sounds of 
sickles in action — sounds as of ripe corn yielding to 
their keen edges, and sounds as of harvesters hasten- 
ing upwards with heavy loads. The darkness lies 
thickly between the workman and his final joy. 

As to the work, my own and others', I am often 
sad about it. Sometimes I feel as if it must be all 
wrong together, there is so much of it, and so much 
bustle and noise in doing it. Conventions, confer- 
ences, congresses, programmes, proposals, bases of 
union, and resolutions amended into more than 
their first emptiness — it is very awful, and may be 
heart-breaking to the watching Lord. Is Gospel 
life — the sweet life which is born of love — an affair 



244 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

of hard words and intricate sentences? Is it so 
frail a life that it must be fed with compromises, 
and coaxed by such parentheses in resolutions and 
programmes as will save its sensibilities at the ex- 
pense of its robustness ? It is sad — oh, so sad ! — 
that Christian men have to explain themselves to 
one another so elaborately lest they should be mis- 
taken for heretics. Christian men are now reso- 
lutely trying- to speak to one another, and are en- 
gaged in stupendous efforts to abstain from mutual 
slaughter. It is grimly pathetic. When shall we 
know what the kingdom of heaven really is ? It is 
not a form — it is not even a form of words, nor 
could it be, for words come and go, and stand for 
different things in different years ; it is a parable — 
a deed of blood, a cry of divinest agony, a house 
not made with hands, a power represented by all 
metaphors expressing life, growth, inspiration, sym- 
pathy, and adoring love. It is the Holy Ghost. 
He is the factor most forgotten. What if He pre- 
fer silence to speech ? What if to Him the church- 
meeting be a wasps* nest, and the convocation a 
remnant of Babel ? We cannot tell. A snowfall of 
resolutions passed by, but the Lord was not in the 
snow ; a storm of declamation broke on the slopes 
of Zion, but the Lord was not in the boisterous 
rant ; then there came a still, small voice, a dream 
in sound, a tender breathing as of a yearning spirit, 
and that was the great power of God. That was 
God the Holy Ghost. 

In beginning my work again, I would be filled 
with the Spirit. Father, make me one of Thine 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 245 

own prophets, a man who can read Christ's heart, 
and all human need, and all the things for which 
no words are good enough. And clothe all Thy 
ministers with power, and enrich them with Thy 
salvation. We shall then do in hot love what can 
never be done in cold criticism, and thus we shall 
receive and reveal the kingdom of brotherhood. 
We do not trust the Lord. We have locked up His 
truth in a muniment-room, and comforted our 
souls with the reflection that come what may we 
can always fall back upon the Court of Chan- 
cery. God has taken many things into His own 
care. We cannot put our plough into the sky, or 
drive our pegs into the horizon, or parcel out the 
sun into private leaseholds, least of all can we bring 
the spiritual universe within the borders of our theo- 
logical tariffs. Yet we must be meddling. We 
must profanely eke out the infirmities of overdone 
omnipotence. We must inyert the order of the 
heavens by writing ecclesiastical letters, and asking 
the Holy Ghost to post them. Thus do we sin 
against God continually. 

The Spirit of God having come, what then ? 
Then demolition, confusion, repentance, reconstruc- 
tion — then a troubled Church, a defeated hell, a 
wind of life over the whole field of spiritual activity, 
almost a sight of God. We must then part with 
many idols and selfish trusts. Many an organisa- 
tion will fall to pieces. Polish, Finish, Culture, 
Scholarship, as we now know them, may have to 
give way. Sinecure, Salary, Committee, and Reso- 



246 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

lution may have to be destroyed. Every species of 
ecclesiastical manufacture many have to be over- 
hauled. Every rightness will have to complete it- 
self by including the rightness of every other man. 
The sect will be a means, not an end. Fellowship 
will be sympathy, not bondage. A voice, not of 
earth, will then proclaim : ^' Behold, I make all 
things new." But if '^ the regular ministry " must 
also go ? So be it. I believe in ministries which 
many would regard as irregular. Let all minister 
who can. The pulpit does not make the minister, 
nor does the college, nor does the gown, nor does 
the diploma ; the minister is a direct creation of 
God. Let Him thrust His own labourers into His 
own harvest, and let us not meddle with the election 
and purpose of Heaven. 

In humble dependence upon the Holy Ghost I 
would return to my work — only mine because it is 
first His. I go back to the city of sorrow — the vast- 
est Aceldama known to history — helpless but for 
the help of God. When Christ came near the Lon- 
don of His day, He wept over it. What if He is 
even now weeping over the men who constitute His 
ministry? What if His tears are the shower before 
the bolt ? It is poor work we can do at the best, 
yet God may use us to great ends. Even the fee- 
blest may be the mightiest, and those who have but 
little hope may return with the richest trophies. 
Enough for me, for any man, to know that the work 
is God's, and that above the topstone will rise the 
song and shout of men who have helped in the 
building of His house Beautiful. 



NOTE XXXIX. 

Some years ago I laid out a small sum in the 
purchase of the most magnificent work ever penned 
upon the subject to which it is devoted — nothing 
less than '' a complete guide to the attainment of 
purity and elegance of style in speaking and writ- 
ing/' The sum expended was **two and eleven/' 
How far the investment was such as to tempt you 
to follow my example you shall presently see. 
Please to remember that the book in question is not 
merely a guide, but a complete guide ; and not a 
complete guide to rudimentary writing, but to the 
attainment oi purity and elega7ice of style. What is 
said on the title-page is repeated on page 33 — '' our 
treatise being designed for the advanced student," 
etc. Notwithstanding this high design, the con- 
descending author gives on his sixteenth page '' Pre- 
liminary Hints to Juvenile Readers," the originality 
and value of which do not admit of two opinions. 
Here they are : 

*^ Be careful to pronounce each word deliberately, 
with a clear and distinct utterance of syllable, and 
with due attention to the vowels, diphthongs, and 
final consonants. Read as if conversing in polite 
society, not as a task, not thinking of your voice 
and how you impress your listeners, but, as far as 
you can, forgetting yourself, and entering into the 



248 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

feelings and sentiments of the author ; and a cau- 
tion to youthful readers may here not be ill-timed, 
namely, that they especially guard against an over- 
serious and formal tone and manner. The object 
of reading is to give pleasure, while imparting infor- 
mation ; therefore the voice, as well as the expres- 
sion of the countenance, should indicate cheerful- 
ness, making it apparent that the reader takes an 
interest in the subject, and is gratified by the exer- 
cise. There is a natural charm in a lively and unaf- 
fected tone ; and, to conclude, we recommend the 
old-fashioned couplet as a very good rule for begin- 
ners, namely, 

' Learn to speak slow ; all other graces 
Will follow in their proper places.' 

'* A variety in exercises gives mastery, and for 
this it is advisable to practise alternately the differ- 
ent styles of composition, from the light and humor- 
ous, to the more grave and dignified.*' 

The comprehensive advice to be careful about 
vowels and diphthongs, yet not to think of the 
voice ; to forget yourself, and yet to let the coun- 
tenance indicate cheerfulness ; not to think of the 
voice, and yet to aim at a lively and unaffected tone, 
is most charming, enabling the author to come in at 
the front-door and go out at the back, and to say 
contradictory things in such a manner as to be 
bound to neither of them. The youthful reader is 
not to think of how he impresses his listeners, yet 
he is to show that he is gratified by the exercise; 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 249 

he is to be indifferent to his hearers, and yet to 
remember that his object is to give them pleasure, 
and impart to them information. They must be 
very juvenile readers for whom such lucid hints 
are designed. You will be pleased to observe that 
the countenance is to indicate cheerfulness, as a 
proof that the reader takes an interest in the sub- 
ject, whether the subject be''^ light and humorous*' 
or '* the more grave and dignified " ; the great object 
with our pleasant author is to be cheerful^ in what- 
ever direction the rhetorical wind may blow. 

So much for juvenile readers. Coming to ** ad- 
vanced students,*' the author " doubts whether the 
strict formality of methodical systems may not 
often prove rather a hindrance than a help to minds 
of a superior cast.*' Keeping his eye upon ^* minds 
of a superior cast," the author sublimely says : 
" Had the early genius of Shakespeare been thus 
cramped and rigidly tied down to precise modes 
and details of study, we much doubt whether his 
imagination would have expanded with the noble 
freedom, and bold and graphic originality, which 
constitute the great charm of his dramatic composi- 
tions. We admit that, so trained, he might have 
been eminently shrewd and clever, but he would 
not have been Shakespeare as he has come down to 
us, and as we delight to know him." This is, of 
course, a most satisfactory explanation of Shake- 
speare. We now see clearly all about him. Avoid 
precise modes and details of study, and you will 
probably be a Shakespeare ; keep clear of '' hints 



250 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

to juvenile readers," or you will never write '' Ham- 
let." The judicial mind of the author admits that 
had Shakespeare read such hints, and been foolish 
enough to take them seriously to heart, he would 
have been a tolerably shrewd man on the whole — 
nay, more, '' eminently shrewd and clever," which 
is a poor encouragement to the pubhc to buy our 
author's ''complete guide." How any man can 
have brought himself to imagine that Shakespeare 
could have been ''cramped and rigidly tied down to 
precise modes and details of study " is not to be 
satisfactorily accounted for, except on the principle 
that he himself was " rigidly tied down " in his 
youth, and has never been able to shake off his 
bonds. 

Having thus explained the majesty of Shake- 
speare, the author adds with wonderful simplicity : 
" We have therefore purposely omitted much of the 
introductory matter commonly found in school 
treatises," etc. This is one of the collateral bless- 
ings which Shakespeare has conferred upon the 
world. Because Shakespeare might have been 
spoiled by modes and details, our author shrinks 
from the possibility of nipping some young Shake- 
speare in the bud, and therefore avoids "precise 
modes and details of study." This was very daring 
on the part of the author, yet he recovered himself 
by the aid of a great name. " Nor," says he, " are 
we without support in this our view. It was the 
advice of Dr. Johnson," etc., clearly showing how 
impossible it is even for the strongest minds to 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN, 251 

proceed far in original thinking without coming 
upon unexpected and illustrious companionship. 
Dr. Johnson advised a young man to give his days 
and nights to Addison, and our author adds this im- 
portant remark: ^^We hold the counsel advisable, 
for his writings exhibit a faultless style and classic 
purity, while breathing a cheerful spirit, enlivened 
with a rich vein of humour and a playful, but harm- 
less, satire, and as a moral essayist he has rarely 
been excelled.'' After this, no one will be at lib- 
erty to question the '' advisableness " of Dr. John- 
son's advice. In the first instance Dr. Johnson 
supports our author's opinion, and in the next our 
author supports Dr. Johnson's opinion, and thus 
the whole question is settled. Still, remembering 
that ^* by some this celebrated essayist is regarded 
as out of date," the author judiciously adds: ^' We 
deem it well, then, to begin with Addison, but by 
no means to end with him." Certainly not ! Begin 
with an author of '' faultless style and classic pu- 
rity," but *^by no means ^;/<3^ with him." Give your 
days and nights to Addison, and the remainder of 
your time to somebody else ! 

One brief division of this " complete guide " is 
entitled '' The Suggestive Faculty," and in giving 
''Hints for its Exercise," the author says: ''In 
order to be fluent in speech, we must be fertile in 
thought ; for words being but the signs of our ideas, 
to have a copious command of the former we must 
multiply the latter. Whatever, therefore, sets our 
thoughts actively at work, will serve our turn, and 



252 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 



claims our first attention. For this formal rules are 
not needful ; a single suggestion may suffice. We 
we will then at once commence.'* Prepare yourself, 
my friend, for one of the most pathetic illustrations 
ever addressed to your heart, and please to re- 
member that it forms part of a book intended for 
** advanced students'' — not for tyros, but for men 
of capacity and strength. The author's object is 
to teach his advanced students how to " multiply 
ideas," and how admirably the illustration is fitted 
to serve this useful purpose you will see without 
the aid of a commentator: '^ You have received, we 
will suppose, two invitations, each being to spend 
a month, one with friends in town, the other in the 
country ; you must choose between them, and per- 
haps are puzzled in so doing. Ere you decide, you 
will think and turn over in your mind the pleasure 
and advantage you may expect from either. On 
the one hand the country tempts you with its fresh- 
ness and beauty, its rural scenes, its walks and rides 
and healthful recreations ; on the other hand, the 
town attracts with its gaieties, its social pleasures, 
and diversified entertainments — in either case not 
omitting the companionship you may prefer and 
the society you will enter into. Here is no lack of 
matter for thinking, if you would choose discreetly ; 
and it will be helpful to note down separately the 
pros and cons, and then weigh and consider. We 
have merely thrown out the hint for the youthful 
composer." 



*' Here is no lack of matter for thinking:! " You 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 253 

will observe that the town attracts you with its 
gaieties ; you will also observe that you are not only 
to thinks but to turn over in your mind^ and the 
difificult part of your work is to think and turn over 
'^the pleasure and advantage" which exist only in 
expectation, and therefore don't exist at all. It is 
very prettily said that the country tempts you with 
its rural scenes. Observe the intellectual process 
through which you have to pass before going out 
for a month's holiday : ^* think — turn over in your 
mind — note down separately — then weigh and con- 
sider " — thaf s all ! Why, you could not do more 
if you had to choose between life and death ! I 
am afraid that if anything could have enfeebled the 
wings of Shakespeare, this process of "thinking" 
would have succeeded in doing so. If you should 
ever avail yourself of this absurd advice, pray don't 
tell the friend whose hospitality you accept that 
you have made your way to his house through the 
briers of such sharp logic, and especially keep the 
secret from his wife, or she will not ask you whether 
you will take tea or coffee, for fear you should re- 
tire for an hour to " note down separately the pros 
and cons." It is, however, a great relief to find our 
author saying, " We have merely thrown out the 
hint for the youthful composer." If the youthful 
composer will do the same thing, the hint will be 
treated exactly as it deserves. No, no ; we must 
have something better than this, worse is impossible. 
Why, this is infinitely better : a minister, whose 
command of words was positively alarming, was 
asked by what method he had acquired such amaz- 



254 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

ing fluency, and he frankly owned it was the result 
of practice. Said he, '' When I go out to walk, I 
say to my stick, ^ Long stick, hard stick, strong 
stick, smooth stick, thick stick, light stick, nice 
stick.' '* Whereupon his waggish listener added, 
'' Drj/ stick," and left him. 

You are not to be deterred from the practice re- 
commended by our author by its difficulty, because 
** such a process constitutes the element of solid 
improvement," and, besides this, ^* the task becomes 
easier with practice : one thought begets another, 
till at length we master the difficulty and become 
conscious of our power. We then begin to take a 
pleasure in duly ordering our ideas, and in giving a 
becoming expression to them." This word of en- 
couragement is needed, considering the painfulness 
of the task appointed by the exacting author. 
Some of us have great difficulty in ^^ commanding 
our thoughts"; judge therefore of my delight in 
coming upon this luminous passage : 

*' It is most desirable to acquire betimes a habit 
of fixing the attention and concentrating the 
thoughts, which are ever prone to wander, espe- 
cially with the unpractised ; a watchful guard is 
therefore requisite to counteract this propensity ; 
and it is no less needful to be able to control our 
ideas than to have formed them aright. In the 
choice of words, also, to give a judicious expression 
to our sentiments, due care and discretion are indis- 
pensable." 

That settles the question, by putting you up to 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 255 

the art and mystery of mental concentration. You 
see now exactly how it is, don't you ? Appoint a 
watchful guard, and give due expression to your 
sentiments — that's all, nothing easier, my dear sir, 
if you know how, which it is not the business of the 
'^ complete'' guide to tell, especially for the trifling 
sum of two and eleven-pence. Still, our author 
must have felt that in putting the case in this clear 
manner he had made a considerable contribution to 
that form of authorship which, as George Eliot 
says, '4s called suggestion, and consists in telling 
another man that he might do a great deal with a 
given subject by bringing a sufficient amount of 
knowledge, reasoning, and wit to bear upon it." 

You will admit, I am sure, the importance of 
** variety in forms of expression " ; on this subject 
our author is conspicuously great, as you will see 
by the following : 

'' This is effected by changing the position of the 
component parts of a paragraph, or compound sen- 
tence, without altering the words. 

'' Example. 

(i) When a good man dies he leaves all his bad be- 
hind, and carries all his good with him. 
When a sinner dies he leaves all his good, 
and carries all his bad. 

(2) When a good man dies he carries all his good, 

etc. 

(3) A good man when he dies leaves, etc. 

(4) A good man when he dies carries, etc. 



256 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

(5) When he dies, a good man, etc. 

(6) A sinner when he dies — When a sinner dies, etc. 
N. B, — This sentence admits of twelve variations." 

Now, sir, no more talk of want of variety in 
preaching ! By a skilful use of this novel permuta- 
tion, one sermon will last you a lifetime. When I 
reflect on this, it is impossible to begrudge the two 
and eleven-pence for so complete a guide. Query : 
If one sentence admits of twelve variations, of how 
many variations will two sermons admit? Then 
the text may be varied : begin one inch from the 
beginning, then begin in the middle, then read it 
backwards, and then try it from the beginning. If 
the order of words may be varied, why may not 
the emphasis of the words be varied too ? See how 
rich a field is opened by this simple plan ! Take 
the text, '' Go thou and do likewise," and the re- 
sults are truly wonderful. Thus 

Go thou and do likewise ; that is, don't do it here, 
but go out and do it. 

Go thou and do likewise ; don't work by deputy, do 
your own work. 

Go thou and do likewise ; it is not enough to go, 
you must also do. 

Go thou and do likewise ; don't merely think or ap- 
prove, but act. 

Go thou and do likewise ; don't be original; copy 
and reflect, but don't originate. 
N, B, — This emphasis is adapted to all subjects 
and occasions. 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 257 

The native delicacy of the author's taste is strik- 
ingly shown in his remarks upon *' Qualified or 
Softened Expression." Some of us have an unfeel- 
ing way of calling a spade a spade, and a shameful 
habit of calling a liar a liar. To all this rudeness 
there may now be a happy end. Speaking upon 
*' Qualified or Softened Expression," the author 
says : '' This serves to mitigate the severity of rude 
and harsh-sounding words, by avoiding all such as 
are highly offensive. Thus, instead of branding the 
individual with the odious epithet of liar, we may 
accuse him of misrepresentation. Instead of the 
stigma sluggard or idler, we say, deficient in energy, 
the reverse of diligent, prone to inaction. Insuffer- 
able pride will be exaggerated self-esteem ; for 
madness, alienation of mind ; and instead of brutal 
folly, a lamentable want of prudence." 

This rule would considerably change (not im- 
prove) the method of putting things in some parts 
of the New Testament. For example, '' If any man 
say he love God, and hateth his brother, he is a 
liar," would be, he is guilty of misrepresentation — 
a much gentler method of dealing with the case. 
Even Solomon, wisest of men, might be amended : 
when he says, '^ Go to the ant, thou sluggard," he 
should be read as saying, ^* Go to the ant, thou who 
art prone to inaction!" When Jesus Christ calls 
Herod a " fox," He should be understood as calling 
him '* that animal of the genus Canis, with a straight 
tail, yellowish hair, and erect ears " — decidedly 
more polite, and more considerate of human feeling. 



258 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Remember that no preacher was ever made by 
rules. You may have a bag full of excellent tools, 
but if your fingers be unskilled, your instruments 
are of little use. Does the spade make the gar- 
dener? Does the easel x^d^^ the painter? A man 
may read guide-books and finger-posts all the days 
of his life, and yet never take a walk ; or he may 
be profound in Bradshaw, and yet never enter a 
train. It is possible, too, to be a critic without 
being an artist, and to be able to find fault without 
being able to do better. Many of your hearers will 
complain of your sermons who could not write a 
sermon if they were to be rewarded with heaven for 
doing so. Don't ^upbraid them for [their inability. 
Fault-finding is a distinct and special talent. What 
would you have thought if, when you told your 
shoemaker that your shoes didn't fit, he had chal- 
lenged you to make a better pair? Remember 
this, and be humble ! 



NOTE XL. 

It has been one of my misfortunes in life that 
people have never forgotten anything I ever said 
or did since I was three years old. The other day 
this misfortune took an awkward turn when a lady 
asked me if I had any photographs representing 
myself at that early period, and what my mother 
thought of me at that tender age. Was I very 
precocious ? Did I strike out and kick a good deal ? 
Were other children afraid of me ? The misfortune 
would not be so severe if people did not expect me 
to remember as clearly as they do. When I say 
** No/' they assume a look which means, You fraud ! 
You base pretender ! How dare you affect to for- 
get ! 

Said one friend, '' Do you remember putting 
your arms round a man and telling him to look 
up?" 

'' No, sir." 

'' You did, and you won that man's heart." 

I am so hardened that I can stand a good many 
things, but one of the things I cannot stand is to 
hear some persons try to quote what I have said. 
Thus : 

^* I was so much profited by what you said about 
the Corinthian pillar and the snake in the grass." 



26o MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Now these are two exciting subjects about which 
I know nothing. I have as a matter of fact never 
considered them. But what could I do? The man 
was profited. Why should I mar his edification 
when it harmed nobody ? 

It is another misfortune of mine, as I told you 
before, to know a man who always finishes my sen- 
tences for me. He is a very friendly policeman. 
When I go out of town I put my house in the care 
of the police, so I wished to recognise their atten- 
tivenesSj and said : 

'' When we are on our holidays it is a great satis- 
faction to us to know that our house is in the 
care " 

I paused. 

He added, '' Of One above." 

I only meet this helpful friend occasionally, but 
never without his endeavouring to assist me. 

When I next saw him I wished to make some 
recognition, in a pecuniary form, of the services of 
the police, so I slowly said : 

'' I have lately been considering *' 

I paused. 

He added, '' Your latter end." 

Now, how is it possible; for me to give that man 
anything ? It would be like giving something to a 
collection. 

A third misfortune of mine is to encounter people 
who have no idea whatever of the meaning of 
words, yet they will sometimes use very long ones. 
What a lady meant I cannot tell, but these are her 
very words : 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 261 

*' When I write your name I always add * incor- 
rigible — one in a million.* '* 

Now, in the name of all inferior animals and 
things without life, what does this faithful woman 
mean ? 

In an omnibus one day I was seated 'opposite a 
young woman who gave her baby so much sponge- 
cake that the little creature coughed itself black in 
the face. A man sitting next to me had the courage 
to remonstrate ; the man, I may add, was that most 
solemn of all creatures, a Scotchman slightly the 
worse for tippling. 

** Woman,** said he gravely, *'what you have now 
done might have been fatal — speaking grammati- 
cally, I say it might have been fatal.** 

On the other hand, it is my good fortune now 
and then to meet a really sensible man. Here is a 
case. A friend came to my private room in the 
City, and said in a tender Welsh tone : 

^* I have called to see if you can ** 

" I cannot,** said I. 

'' Can*t you ? ** he sweetly inquired. 

'' No,** I added. 

" Thank you,** said he ; and the interview was at 
an end. 

I wonder if he was going to ask me to accept a 
hundred pounds? 



NOTE XLI. 



Thomas is my occasional gardener. He is full 
of notions. Not what I want, but what he wants, 
is the rule in my garden, which is only about half 
an acre in size when all is said and done. From 
Thomas's talk, you would think it was a large estate 
enclosed in a ring fence, and that only himself 
could handle the immense concern. Perhaps it is 
his liver. I cannot say positively. But whatever 
it is, it so works upon Thomas as to keep him in 
a constant state of alarm and apprehension. For 
hearing all sorts of awful things Thomas is as un- 
lucky as an evening newspaper. Thomas never 
smiles. Thomas seldom speaks except when he 
has something very awe-inspiring to communicate, 
and then his whisper is worth a fortune. When I 
approach Thomas in what I mean to be a cheerful 
and exhilarating manner, his very look chills me to 
the marrow. He is sure to have heard something 
quite dreadful which he has read in a comic news- 
paper. For what earthly reason I cannot make 
out, it is so unlike what you would expect, Thomas 
takes in a funny paper every w^eek, and gets out of 
it the most astounding information. He must read 
the paper upside down. Perhaps, I say, it is his 
liver. What else can it be that leads Thomas to 
suppose that the advertisements are the paper, and 
the literary contents are the mere filling up? 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 263 

Thomas has his own way of doing everything, and 
no man can turn him from it. 

The other day, it may be two years since, I 
meant to be very rollicking and mirth-provoking, so 
I asked the following funny question :. 

*^ Thomas," said I, '^ how are things going on ? '' 

I thought he would see the irresistible fun of the 
inquiry. He failed. 

" O lor, sir! " said he, his face rigid "and pale, " I 
see by the paper that many crowned heads are 
trembling in their shoes.'' 

*^ Thomas," said I, the last spark of humour dying 
in my frivolous breast, " how do you account for 
that?" 

Thomas took a spell at deep digging and simply 
said nothing. He literally forgot that I was stand- 
ing there. 

** There be a-many things going on," said he at 
length, *' which if they was not a-pushing about one 
would say that something or other was a-standing 
upside down." 

''Thomas," said I, "you never spoke a truer 
word." 

'' In particular in that there America," said 
Thomas, '' which I never did think a very safe place 
to live in, not but that it's big enough." 

'^ But Thomas," said I, '' what on earth are you 
talking about ? I don't see how your words hang 
together." 

" Why, sir," he replied, '' they have elevators 
there — machines that go up and down places like 
chimneys — to save running upstairs." 



264 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

"Well, what of it?" 

'' A good deal, sir. I see the other day, in that 
there paper o' mine, that a man had something the 
matter with him, and the chemist he tell the man 
Oh, lor ! it is too awful ! " 

** What, Thomas?" 

" Why, sir, that man had something in him 
which went up and down, and up and down, all day 
long, and the chemist and druggist tell the man 
that he knew exactly what was the matter with him." 

*' And what was the matter, Thomas? " 

'^ Well, sir, you will never guess, not if you was 
to stand there till the Judgment Day." 

^^ Then tell me." 

^^ As true as true, sir, the druggist told the man 
that he had swallowed the elevator, and the man 
was so compounded and fuzzled-like as he couldn't 
deny it. No America for me, if you please," said 
Thomas, snipping off a dead twig with a jack-knife. 

" Thomas," said I, '^ the world may or may not 
be round, but it is undoubtedly queer." 

"Ay," said Thomas, drawing a long sigh and 
looking the very picture of misery, ^^ and it will be 
queerer still, and a good deal queerer, if they go 
on making many more pills and plasters." 

"Pills?'' 

**Yes. I don't say it is not. I won't lie about 
it. I see by the paper there was a earthquake 
somewhere — somewhere a long, long way from 
here, and a man said he knew a pill as could cure 
It. I read that, sir, with my own eyes. I got my 
little girl, sir, to read it over again, and she burst 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 265 

into tears, and cried like a rainy day till I promised 
her a doll." 

'* Then she quieted down, did she ? '' 
'* She did, sir. She dried up wonderful.'' 
'^ Thomas," said I, '' have you a vote for a Mem- 
ber of Parliament ? " 

'* In course I have, sir, which is no more nor 
right, as I often say, says I. Life would not be 
worth living, says I, if reading jnen could not vote 
blue or yellow, and please themselves which." 

The Course I Took. 

I don't say it was a safe course, or a course that 
any other man should take. I simply say that I 
took it. The man I mean — of course you have 
heard of him, so I need not tell you his name — had 
an odd way of finishing my sentences for me, and 
of telling me with great feeling that he knew what 
I meant, and then putting it into words from which 
I shrank in awful fright. " I know what you 
mean," said he; **you mean that the one is not so 
beastly vulgar as the other." Now, nothing was 
further from my meaning, but have I hurt his feel- 
ings by telling him so? ^' I know what you mean," 
said he ; ** you mean that, of all the confounded 

nuisances in this blessed world " No ; not that 

— as far from that as possible. I should say, speak- 
ing roundly and off-handedly, about two million 
miles from that. But as he saw my meaning so 
clearly, it seemed cruel to mar his innocent gaiety, 
and to turn my back on a man who thought he was 
doing me a good turn. He so far saw my meaning 



266 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

that he could break in upon a sentence and close It 
for me in the most startling manner. In my calmer 
moments I speak very slowly, and thus I afford 
many openings for ardent minds. My quieter style 
tempts quick-speaking persons to enrich my halting 
talk with many parentheses. They cannot resist 
the tiny demon which they call their '' genius.'* 

Take a specimen of what I mean, not forgetting 
how painfully slow is my speech : 

** I saw the other day [a man on two donkeys] a 
forlorn-looking sailor [wondering what land was 
made for], who asked me for an odd copper 
[tobacco again], and when I asked him how he 
spent his Sundays [he looked forlorner still], he 
said that his widowed mother and a very infirm but 
respectable uncle [both in the workhouse], though 
so tall as to be continually [in the way of the 
swallows] had always advised him [to despise incon- 
venient questions], and when I remonstrated *' 

" I know what you mean,'* said my friend ; "you 
mean that when you fluffed up to him like an ex- 
cited turkey ** 

'' No, my friend,*' said I — " far from it. I let 
turkeys do their own business. I never fluff. I do 
not go to the poultry-yard for my manners. But 
as your mind is so keen — in fact, as your precision 
so strongly resembles omniscience — I may tell you 
that though the prophet Balaam once held a brief 
interview with a donkey, I am not aware that the 
donkey was so complete an ass as to suppose that 
he knew what the prophet meant." 

That is the course I took. A minister is some- 
times driven to very painful alternatives, and my 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 267 

only wonder is that, on the whole, he can adopt 
them with so unaffected a resignation. 

The course I took in another case may appeal to 
the sympathy of many brethren. It was the case 
of a baby. I call her a baby, for she was only four 
and a half within a year or two. But so precocious ! 
Her information turned me white. I am sure 
nobody can believe a word I am going to say. She 
asked me when we were alone if I had seen the 
cat, and, obeying my conscience, I answered, '' No.'* 
** If you give him a strawberry he will almost sing 
^ God save the Queen.' *' 

*' Have you read about the Roosians? *' she con- 
tinued. 

'' Yes." 

'^And about the resurrections?*' 

That such big words should come out of so small 
a mouth simply stupefied me. 

'* Have you any brothers ? '' 

^^ Jack. But Jack is a dunce.*' 

" Oh, for Heaven's sake ! " I rashly exclaimed, 
*Mo fetch him." 

'* He is dirty," she said. 

'' The dirtier the better," I assured her. '' Run," 
said I, ^^and bring Jack at once. I long for him." 

** He has been throwing coals at the dog all day." 

** Bless his heart ! " said I ; ** oh, kiss him for me, 
and bring in the dog too." 

^' The dog knows more than Jack knows." 

** Then, keep the dog out," I answered. '' Oh, ken- 
nel the beast ! Tie him up with ropes. Fetch Jack." 

*'Jack has a naughty prayer," said she. '' He 



268 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

says, ' O God, I thank you for making nice snails, 
and I thank you for giving me strength to squash 
them/ " 

Jack came. Jack was coaly in appearance. He 
might have brought the coals up from the pit. He 
was sooted o'er with the dark grim of thoughtless- 
ness. But I loved him. He knew nothing about 
Roosians and resurrections. 

*' Jack," said I, ''are you really a dunce?** 

'' I can throw a stone furder nor Billy Towns- 
hend," was his incoherent reply. 

** Where do you throw stones. Jack?" 

** At Jolly's hen-pen." 

*' Jack," said I, '' here's my hand. I love you. I 
could scream about you. I could strike a medal in 
your honour. Oh, Jack, let me hug you, and kiss 
you, and bless you ! Jack, you are a coaly, sooty 
hero ! " 

That was the course I took. Jack liked me. He 
said he would not mind coming to chapel if I could 
^'make it shorter." 

My doctor is the man who forces me to a course 
which might be painful if I could really believe him. 
He is so kind and so sympathetic that he tells lies. 
At least, I fear he does, and I feel it the more be- 
cause he tells them for my sake. He wants to com- 
fort me. Thus : 

" Doctor, what can I do for a pain in the head ? " 
" I know it well," he would answer ; *' I once had 
that same pain seventeen weeks, and never closed 
my eyes during the whole time." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 269 

'' Doctor/' another time, ** I have such a pain in 
my left eye/* 

" Nothing to what I have had/* said he ; "I had 
a pain in both eyes for four months, and at one 
time my friends were afraid I should lose my 
reason/* 

Whatever disease I had the doctor had had, only 
he had suffered fifteen times more than I did, and 
fifteen times longer. At length I invented a case. 

" Doctor,'* said I, '^ I am afraid hydrophobia may 
be coming on.** 

** When I had it,** said he, " my friends put me into 
a strait-waistcoat and mopped my head with soap- 
suds five times a day, and, strange as it may appear, 
and indeed incredible, the only thing that did me 
good was almonds and raisins.** 

What was I to do ? What course was I to take ? 
How could I tell him that he fibbed on a gigantic 
scale? I wished to take a judicious course, so I 
started my complaint from the spiritual side. 

" Doctor," said I, '* what is a man to do who has 
broken all the commandments ? ** 

^* When I broke them '* said he. 

'' You, doctor ? '' 

'' I mean,'' he said, "when I was on the point of 
breaking some of them — — ** 

" Oh, which,** said I—" do say which ? ** 

" I mean," he said, " I mean, I suppose, I cannot 
but feel, I " 

Said I : " Doctor, that's just my case. You have 
said what I have long meant to say as soon as I 
could put my thoughts into shape.*' 

I think he saw it. 



NOTE XLII. 

If we believe the New Testament, we believe 
that men were once " made whole " without medi- 
cine or doctor. If this was a fact in New Testa- 
ment times, why may it not become a fact in the 
present day? If it is a fact, it is the most bene- 
ficent fact in history, and, being such, it ought, if 
possible, to be recalled and re-established. To 
grasp the question wisely and thoroughly, we must 
go back to Christ's own day and think with Him. 
We have no concern with knaveries, quackeries, 
empiricisms, or fraud and pretence of any kind ; all 
these must be banished from the mind, or they will 
create prejudices which truth itself cannot pene- 
trate. First of all, let us strive after simplicity of 
mind; that is essential to progress. Did Christ 
heal men? Yes, He did. Did Christ's Apostles 
heal men ? Yes, they did. Was the healing me- 
chanical, surgical, medicinal? No, it was not. 
Was the healing spiritual, sympathetic, mental? 
Yes, it was. Is Christ the same yesterday, to-day, 
and for ever? Yes, He is. Does Christ still live 
and work and reign ? Yes, He does. That settles 
the case. Suffering is the same, Christ is the same, 
love is the same. Then what is wanting? Just 
what was wanting in Christ's own day. Dost thou 
believe ? Believest thou that I am able to do this 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 271 

thing ? All things are possible to him that be- 
lievetho He could not do many mighty works 
there because of their unbelief. We must simply 
and heartily adopt the belief— a most rational be- 
lief it is— that the things which are impossible with 
men are possible with God. That is all. The be- 
lief must not be mere assent ; it must be the ruling 
and ever-active principle of the life. Not to doubt 
is not belief. Mental indifference is not belief. 
Belief is by-life. We must, however, take care that 
belief is maintained at its proper level. This is 
vital. What is the proper level of belief ! It is not 
that it is best to be cured ; it is that God knows 
best whether it shall be life or death, and to say, 
*^ Thy will be done.*' We are, of course, naturally 
inclined to think that it is best for us to be cured, 
whereas we ought to have no opinion about the 
case at all, but to leave it absolutely in the hands 
of God. The curing of disease is a very paltry 
matter; to cure the disease of distrust of God is 
the supreme miracle. That is health. The healed 
heart will then talk thus : '' Lord, my body is dis- 
eased, my suffering is great ; thou knowest whether 
it is better for me to die than to live. I want to be 
well. I enjoy life. I want to live for the children's 
sake, for the work's sake, for my own sake. But 
I am ignorant, I am small-minded, I am selfish. 
Make Thy will my will, and evermore may Thy will 
be done.*' That is faith at its highest level, and, in- 
deed, on its only level, for on any other line it is 
only disguised self-consideration. 

That there is a power which is not dependent on 



2J2 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

our desire or our will is clearly shown in the New 
Testament as well as in the Old. Mountains could 
be removed, storms could be silenced, bread could 
be multiplied. I do not, however, know any case 
in which a man was healed against his will. There 
are certainly cases in which the faith was not in 
the sufferer, but in his father or friends, as, for ex- 
ample, in the case of demoniacal possession. But 
in such case faith was impossible, and, being impos- 
sible, was not indispensable, for Christ magnified 
Himself in the infirmity of the sufferer. 

What we, then, have to strive for is the higher 
faith of acquiescence in the Divine will, not caring 
whether it is by life or by death that we have to 
magnify God's grace. That believing men are not 
healed, but are actually plunged into deeper suffer- 
ing is no argument against the potency of faith. It 
is in the well-borne contradiction of our desires that 
we carry our faith to its highest point. The ques- 
tion should never be dependent on the lower will, 
the minor desire, but always on God's will, which 
can never be cruel and never be mistaken. Then, 
at our weakest we may be at our strongest, and in 
dying we may abolish death. The miracles of faith 
have often been regarded as miscarriages, because 
we have judged them in one way only, and that 
way the mean way of our own will. The miracle 
of love may have eclipsed the miracle of power, 
and in another world we may see that our disap-' 
pointment was our greatest blessing. 

The question then arises. Are we to force our 
faith upon God, and to judge Him by our ignor- 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 273 

ance ? Am I to say, '' Lord, I am blind or maimed, 
and I ask Thee to heal me, for with my whole 
heart I believe Thou art able to do this " ? I may 
say this, but I must not conclude there. I must 
repeat the Lord's prayer : '' Nevertheless, not my 
will, but Thine, be done." In such a case the 
bodily eyes may remain blind, but the eyes of 
the soul will enjoy strong, clear vision. That is 
the true faith-healing, and the true healing-faith. 
What is faith but the superiority of the spiritual 
over the material ? I have not the shadow of a 
doubt that the material will decrease and the spiri- 
tual will increase. The ponderous locomotive will 
be superseded. We shall have telegraphy without 
the wire. We shall ring up souls as we now ring up 
the ears of the body. We shall know that we are 
wanted at the telephone, and go to it and listen for 
a message. This is the spirit of the new time, as it 
was the spirit of the old time. We are moving to 
wards the God-power — God is a Spirit. Mind created 
all things, why should not Mind rule them? With 
barrow and spade a day-labourer can carry the 
mountain into the sea. Why cannot a faith-inspired 
mind order it out of the way and scatter it on the 
waves? In the end it will be so, but not until uni- 
versal mind is in universal harmony, for otherwise 
faith would be the creator of disorder, and the 
enemy of peace. We shall then see, not the faith 
of one man, but the consolidated faith of all men. 



NOTE XLIII. 

I WANT to tell you about a boy that had a gar- 
den, which was not like any other garden you ever 
saw or ever heard about. The boy himself never 
saw the garden. Only think ot that, now ! A boy 
had a garden and never saw it ! A boy sowed seed 
in his garden, yet never set his foot in it ! There 
were twenty gates into the garden, and the boy 
watched every one of them, for fear the plants and 
the flowers should be stolen. But that is not all. 
The funniest thing is that wherever the boy went 
he carried the garden along with him. Wherever 
the boy went, the garden went ; and whenever the 
boy had a moment to spare he put something into 
the garden. 

Now, would you like to hear about this boy and 
his garden? If you would like me to tell you all I 
know about it, hold up your right hand as high as 
ever you can. Now hold up the left hand in the 
same way. Now hold up both hands together just 
as high as ever you can reach. Very well ; now I 
see you are all awake, so I can begin. 

The boy's name was Janey. But wait a moment. 
I must be wrong. Is Janey a boy's name ? Tell 
me. (Children answer.) Then I will tell you what 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 275 

it must have been. It must have been Jamie. 
That's it. Now what does Jamie stand for ? (Chil- 
dren answer, James.) Yes ; that is it. Who can 
spell James ? (Let them try.) But who can spell 
garden? (Let them try.) Very good. Now we 
come to Jamie and his garden. Jamie had a spade, 
a rake, a hoe, and a dibble. None of you can spell 
dibble, can you ? (Let them try.) But who can 
spell hoe ? That will puzzle you. (Try.) There 
were many strange things that Jamie put in the gar- 
den. One was a little, hard, black seed, and when 
the flower came up Jamie called it " good resolu- 
tion." That is a long word. How many syllables 
are there in it ? (Try.) Who can spell it ? (Try.) 
Now, what is a resolution? You don't know. 
Well, let me tell you. When a boy makes up his 
mind to get all his lessons quite ready for school, 
he makes a resolution, and when he keeps his word 
he is said to carry out his resolution. Jamie had 
six good resolutions ""all in a row. Shall I tell you 
their names ? If you would like me to tell you their 
names, lift up your right hand. (Go through same 
process as before.) Thank you. (i) To keep all 
his clothes clean ; (2) To get all his lessons off ; (3) 
To get out of bed the very moment he was called ; 
(4) Never to get into a bad temper ; (5) Never to 
cheat when he was playing ; (6) Always to say " if 
you please '' when he wanted anything. Now, can 
you tell me anyone of Jamie's six resolutions? 
(Try.) A very strange thing once happened in the 

garden belonging to What did I say the boy's 

name was? (Answer.) Yes; Jamie. One of the 



2/6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

gates opened as if by itself, and Jamie went to see 
what was the matter, and behind the gate there was 
a little fellow almost hidden in the hedge, and his 
name was Tommy Play. Tommy never did any 
work ; he always wanted to play with somebody, and 
he would have played even on Sunday if his mother 
had not kept her eye on him. Tommy put up his 
finger, as if he wanted Jamie to go to him ; but 
Jamie said. No, he could not go because he was 
busy in the garden. What do you think Tommy 
did? He offered to give Jamie two marbles if he 
would go and play. Then he said he would lend 
Jamie his top to spin all the afternoon if he would 
play : but Jamie said ^^ No,'* and just then Tommy's 
mother came along with a leather strap, and gave 
Tommy such a stroke upon the arm that he began 
to cry. And what do you think he did then ? 
Would you like me to tell you ? If you would like 
me to tell you, hold up your right hand. (Same 
exercise as before.) Well, Tommy told his mother 
that it was all Jamie's fault ; that Jamie came out 
of the garden and wanted him to play. Now what 
do you call that? It was a LIE! It would be 
better for a boy to have his right hand cut off than 
to tell a lie. A lie is a very awful thing ! It is so 
cowardly, so mean, so selfish. The boy who tells 
lies never comes to any good. But I want to tell 
you more about Jamie, so we will let Tommy's 
mother take him home and tell him what she thinks 
of him. 

Jamie went back to his work in the garden, and 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 277 

what do you think poor little Jamie did ? Try to 
guess. (Give them a little time.) I will tell you. 
Poor little Jamie forgot to shut the garden gate. 
He never thought of it. He just ran away, as if 
Tommy's mother was going to beat him, too. It 
was a pity Jamie did not shut the gate, and I will 
tell you why. A dog got in at the open gate and 
ran all over the garden, and made such a mess of 
the flower-beds. It was not a bad dog ; it did 
everything in play ; but that did not hinder it from 
doing a great deal of mischief, and giving Jamie a 
great deal of trouble. People should always shut 
gates. It is always a wise thing to lock a gate, 
because dogs are going about, or robbers, or some 
sort of bad people. If ever you open a gate be sure 
to shut it again. If Jamie had shut the gate, the 
dog could not have got in. Poor Jamie was very 
sorry when he saw what the dog had done. But 
Jamie was not the boy to sit down and cry about 
things. Jamie buckled to like a good lad, and soon 
had the garden put right again. 

Now, shall I tell you the name of Jamie*s garden? 
(Answer.) Would you really like to know it ? (An- 
swer.) If you would really like to know the name 
of Jamie's garden, walk twice round the room, then 
sit down just where you are now. (Let this be 
done.) That's good. Now I am sure you would 
like to know. Very well, then, Jamie's garden was 
Jamie's heart. Every one has that very same kind 
of garden, and every one may sow seed in his heart 
that will come up in beautiful flowers, or perhaps 
in beautiful fruit. Some children sow bad seed in 



2/8 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

their hearts, then all sorts of bad things spring up, 
and it is often very hard to pull them up by the 
root. It is no use pulling the leaves or cutting the 
twigs off. You do no good until you have got 
down to the root, and torn it every bit right out 
of the ground. Now, I leave you to think about all 
this. What was the boy's name ? (Answers by the 
children.) What had he got? What did he call 
the flower that came up ? How many flowers ot 
that name were all in a row ? Can you tell me any 
of their names? Who opened the gate? What 
did he tell his mother? What did Jamie forget to 
do ? What happened then ? What was the name 
of Jamie's garden? Thank you. That will do for 
the present. 



NOTE XLIV. 

Although it is generally safer to prophesy after 
an event than before it, life would become very in- 
sipid and disagreeable if we could not sometimes 
take a canter in the dark. But, truth to tell, I do 
not see much darkness upon the main outlines of 
the twentieth century, a century of silent, but pro- 
found and historic, revolutions and developments. 

PREACHING. 

Preachers there will always be, and possibly great 
preachers, but, taken broadly, there will be no pul- 
pit in the twentieth century. Preaching is the 
supreme impertinence, as between man and man, 
unless the preacher be divinely inspired and quali- 
fied. Given an inspired message and an inspired 
messenger, and the pulpit is safe. Is it possible 
that England can require all the preaching, and the 
kind of preaching, that is done in it every week ? 
Does England require the preaching of thirty thou- 
sand able-bodied men every Sunday — and twice 
every Sunday — in the year? Or, if all the preach- 
ing is required, is it required in the same place ? 
The Master said, '*Go into all the world." Do not 
many of us say, *' Come into our nice little meeting- 
house and take a sitting in front of the gallery"? 
Let every man answer for himself. 



28o MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

TEACHERS. 

I distinguish broadly between preachers and 
teachers. The latter we shall always need. Of well- 
equipped teachers we can hardly have too many. 
The coming century will be impatient with incom- 
petent teachers; but the very degree of its impa- 
tience, on the one hand, will be the degree of its 
appreciation on the other. Men do willing homage 
to the teachers who can bring them within clear 
sight of all the kingdoms of God — Righteousness, 
Purity, Music Beauty, and Eternal Love. 

CHURCHES. 

As to churches, a wonderful change will take 
place. Little Bethels and Zions, '' born to blush 
unseen,*' will be swept off the face of the earth. 
Small tests of faith, sectarian standards [of ortho- 
doxy, pedantries, whims, and theological crazes will 
all disappear, and men will gather in adoring love 
around the Christ of God. There will be a grand 
Church, then ! In that holy day opinion will be 
nothing accounted of compared with sincere love 
and passionate devotion to the service of the poor, 
the weak, and the weary, who need a word in sea- 
son. In that day men will not know that there 
ever was so great an anomaly as a State Church. 
The buttress of the State will have been displaced 
by the unseen arm of the living God, and outward 
glitter will disappear under the dawning and bright- 
ening radiance of spiritual beauty and loveliness. 
The Church of the triumphant Saviour will in very 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 281 

deed be established, for she shall have granite for 
her foundations and salvation for her walls. 

The great freedom which is coming upon all sec- 
tions of the one Church will not be the freedom of 
wanton and riotous license. It will be the freedom 
of eternal law — the law which makes astronomic 
music and keeps the oceans within their appointed 
lines. We must set our faces as a flint against the 
crime of violating, even in vain attempt, the solemn 
and rhythmic order of God. 

PROFESSIONALISM. 

In the twentieth century the Christian conception 
of thought and service will be cleansed of every 
taint of professionalism. The taint is indeed foul 
and mischievous. Many of the old heresies would 
pass out of the mind of the world if men were not 
professionally engaged in keeping them green and 
blooming by constant watering. From every point 
of view, this is vanity and vexation of spirit. It is 
unspeakably sad to see men taking long journeys to 
the cemeteries of the opening Christian centuries, 
exhuming putrescent heretics, making their ghastly 
jaws repeat their foetid commonplaces, then argu. 
mentatively slapping their faces and putting them 
back in their antiquated shrouds. It is a hideous 
way of getting a living. Let the dead bury their 
dead. Leaving the things that are behind, let us, 
for Christ's dear sake, press to the arms He opens 
for us. The twentieth century will want to know 
the present truth, and not to hear the lies men used 
to tell two thousand years ago. 



282 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

POLITICS. 

Politically, what changes will take place ere the 
close of the twentieth century ! The Ecclesiastical 
Commissioners will all be paid off, and their millions 
have gone to the reduction of the National Debt. 
Leaseholds will have become freeholds. The land 
will be no longer the monopoly of men who never 
paid for it. Men will not be great by title but by 
character. He who does most good will be crowned 
as the king of men. The House of Commons will 
consist of five-and-twenty members, and the House 
of Lords of six referees. Vestry locusts and 
County Council vampires will have died of starva- 
tion, and been buried *' unwept, unhonoured, and 
unsung.'' The tax-gatherer will no longer be a 
shadow on the door-step, but the welcome presence 
of an honest messenger sent by honest neighbours. 

THE PUBLIC-HOUSE. 

And the public-house, where will that be ? It 
will be burned with fire and ^brimstone. It was 
built by the devil, and to the devil it will go. The 
public-house is the gate to hell. Who can write 
the story of the ruin it has wrought? Oh, the mis- 
ery, the heart-break, the desolation, the orphan- 
hood, the murder, the suicide, the madness, for 
which that accursed house is responsible ! But the 
twentieth century will see the passing away of the 
chief tragedy of perdition. In fancy's quick, glad 
hearing I catch the sound of all the distilleries, 
breweries, drunkeries, falling in one terrific crash ; 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 283 

whilst there goes up to heaven the thrilling shout, 
" The house of Bacchus — that street-corner god of 
London — has fallen into hell ! '' 

SCIENCE. 

Science will be no longer hostile to religion, nor 
religion hostile to science. There never should 
have been any controversy between them. The 
God of the Bible is the God of Nature. He planted 
the forests, and breathed the life, and moulded the 
stars, and made the whole house we live in. He 
that built all things is God. Religion may have to 
change her forms and her way of putting things, 
but not her reverence for God or her glad obedience 
to His will. So long as the sky is above the earth 
man will need religious expressions of word and 
service for his highest nature and his noblest im- 
pulses. Little Dogma must give way to immeasu- 
rable Truth, stunted Creed must make room for 
majestic and increasing Faith, and shrunken Self 
must yield to the diviner claims of Man. 

LITERATURE. 

In literature, authors will be paid and publishers 
well rewarded. A ghastly Paternoster Row skel- 
eton will no longer go up and down amongst the 
poorer ministers, asking them to write gratuitously 
for his magazine on the ground that they may be 
doing more good than they are aware of. What a 
benevolent skeleton ! What a religiously-disposed 
rhinoceros ! All this miserable knavery will be 



284 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

scorned out of existence, and honest labour will be 
liberally rewarded. This state of things is being 
rapidly brought about now. Periodical writers are 
often paid with a liberal hand. 

PUBLIC COMPANIES. 

The twentieth century will see a great change in 
the matter of public companies. They are, one 
and all, so far as I have seen the prospectuses, cun- 
ningly-plotted swindles. I make no reference to 
private companies. I refer to companies got up by 
company-promoters. Who can tell the misery con- 
sequent upon the Liberator swindle ? Every man 
connected with that business ought, in my opinion, 
to be publicly flogged. No punishment could 
equal the crime. I say this as a minister who 
knows family sorrows hereby occasioned too dread- 
ful to be expressed in words. 

WOMEN. 

The position of woman in the twentieth century 
will be in happy contrast to that which she now 
occupies. It is now customary on the part of weak 
men to lower the conversation so as to bring it 
within the feminine capacity. I have been im- 
mensely amused by the superhuman condescension 
of sundry masculine idiots. The moment a lady 
enters the room the subject drops from even a very 
moderate intellectual level to the baby, the weather, 
the crops, and the newest thing in umbrellas. 
There is a softened murmur of maudlin consolation 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 285 

in respect of rheumatism, and a feebly energetic 
protest against any woman caring, or daring, to 
have an opinion of her own. Recent University 
successes have shown that women can go to the top 
without losing one atom of grace or gentleness, of 
simplicity or child-likeness, of sympathy or affection. 
All that has been taken away from the region of 
fancy, and sqwarely settled down in the region of in- 
disputable fact. It must be very humbling to men 
of a certain cast of mind to know that girls take the 
B. A. degree in dozens and scores, and never stoop 
to wear the elementary and now humiliating de- 
coration. But what are third-class men to think 
of girls who know mathematics and natural phi- 
losophy enough to build the Forth Bridge, and yet 
can laugh, and dance, and joke, and even take a 
hand in the kitchen ? 

CONCLUSION. 

I congratulate the men who will live far into the 
new century. I would I were just now beginning 
my ministry if I could begin it with my present 
experience. Shall we see things on earth from our 
spheres beyond the death-line? Shall we be per- 
mitted to see how silver comes instead of iron, and 
gold instead of silver? We shall soon know. The 
sun-set of this century is the s-unrise of the next. 
Let us more and more confidently hope in the Liv- 
ing God. 



NOTE XLV. 

I FEEL that the argument for a State Church has 
not been stated as forcibly as it might have been, 
and I am quite sure that Nonconformists do not 
realise the argument which they have to answer. 
Nonconformist and Dissenter are two very different 
terms. John Wesley was a Nonconformist, but he 
did not oppose a State Church. Church and State 
are the principal words in the argument, but it is 
often forgotten that they are words of changeable 
meaning. The word '^ State " has undergone a 
great change ; it is now an almost religious term. 
What with its taking up such work as education, 
temperance, thrift, arbitration, care of the aged 
poor, and emigration, it is a most domestic and true 
friend. The State is not now merely a taxing-ma- 
chine ; it is the guardian and friend of moral pro- 
gress. The Church, too, is not what it once was ; 
it is self-reformed — it begins to understand the age. 
When it de-feudalises and de-Romanises its Prayer- 
Book, and when its bishops cease to be lords of the 
realm, that they may become the fathers and pas- 
tors of the people, it need not trouble itself about 
disestablishment ; that question is entirely in the 
hands of the Church itself. Less lord and more 
Lord, and the Church cannot be injured ; less priest 
and more pastor, and the Church is safe. The 



I 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 287 

Church should recognise that an intelligent and ear- 
nest Nonconformity is one of its best friends, 
because it is critical, emulous, and suggestive. He 
is in the Apostolic succession who inherits the Apos- 
tolic spirit, and who lovingly undertakes Apostolic 
work. Apostolicity is not an order ; it is a spirit. 

Nonconformists will never accept public money 
for spiritual service, because they believe that Chris- 
tian love should pay for all such service. Why not 
take public money for service rendered to the 
State ? There are recognised '' temporalities " even 
in religious work, why should not the State help all 
Christian communions in that direction? Sites 
have to be purchased, buildings to be erected, leases 
to be renewed, dilapidations to be made good, and 
the poor to be helped. I distinguish between 
State patronage and State gratitude. The Churches 
are the best soldiers, the best policemen, and the 
best financial securities of the nation. The State is 
therefore deeply indebted to the Churches, and 
should appropriately recognise its obligations. As 
to State control, all churches have it : they are 
exempted from rates and taxes ; they are licensed 
for marriages ; they are debarred from commerce ; 
they must keep their doors open during public ser- 
vice ; when disputes arise respecting theological 
trust-deeds, those deeds must be interpreted and 
determined by legal tribunals ; and when marriages 
are solemnised the agent of the State is indispen- 
sable. Talk about State control ! There it is. 

As to the rot that is talked about Henry VHI. 
being head of the Church and Charles I. being head 



288 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

of the Church, it is not true. It is not the man ; 
it is the Kmg that is head of the Church. There 
are bad Dissenting ministers as well as bad Romish 
popes, but they do not destroy the character, the 
dignity, or the true succession of the ministry. 

A State Church should provide for Nonconfor- 
mity, and should never account Nonconformity a 
crime or a heresy. 

Has the complicated but responsible unit called 
the State the right to elect a religion ? 

That is the vital question. If it has such a right, 
all else is mere matter of detail. If it has not, 
then disestablishment becomes an immediate and 
most urgent duty. 



NOTE XLVI. 

It is quite an awful thing to have an ambition 
which you cannot realise, and which you dare not 
breathe to your dearest friend. You shut yourself 
up like Archimedes, and brood upon it, and are 
quite sure that to-morrow you will be running out 
in your night-shirt, screaming ^^ Eureka ! " and yet 
that morrow recedes from you like the horizon : 
you think you have it now, and lo ! the bubble has 
only damped the hand that snatched it. It is a 
new principle you are in search of — a new way of 
doing things — telegraphing without wires ; commu- 
nicating with the Antipodes without mechanism ; 
seeing without eyes, and little efforts of that sort ; 
and in your own secret soul you think it can be 
done if you apply your mind to it. You apply 
your mind to it, but nothing rewards your pious in- 
dustry. It is as bad as having an unproved earl- 
dom in the family. You are sure you are an earl, 
and that you ought to be in possession of ten thou- 
sand acres in each of ten counties, and the only 
thing that lies between you and success is one bit 
of official paper — say a birth register or a marriage 
certificate. I am so glad there is no disputed earl- 
dom in our family, for I can get to work in an hon- 
est way, and pick up an honest livelihood. If any 
man tells you that you are an earl, poison him. My 



290 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

father was potentially present in the Garden of 
Eden ; but I say nothing about it, as I have no 
wish to discourage the rest of the human family. 

Why does one man succeed and another fail ? I 
don't know. As a rule, good work brings good suc- 
cess, but not always so. Many men work hard, but 
they work at the wrong end ; many men apparently 
do nothing and get everything ; other men are 
ruined by going in quest of the philosopher's stone. 
I have an idea that I am just on the point of dis- 
covering something that will turn the world black 
and blue with surprise, but that idea yields me no 
income at present. I think it has something to do 
with telepathy, and with so affecting the minds of 
millionaires that they will provide for my old age. 
That is exactly where many men get wrong : they 
dream more than they work. Some of my brethren 
say I have been a lucky man. I not only deny the 
suggestion ; I denounce it. God has enabled me 
to take everything I have by hard work — I am in 
very deed a hard-working man. Whatever I can 
do, I can do at once ; if it is beyond me, I never 
attempt it. I have no arrears ; all my letters are 
answered by the first post. If an editor wants an 
article from my pen, he has it in two hours, though 
it be two columns long. To luck I owe nothing ; to 
hard work I owe everything. By rising at seven, 
reading the papers at half-past, breakfasting at eight, 
avoiding all animal food after two, and sleeping on 
porridge and milk, I can work with pleasure. I owe 
a great deal to my not moving resolutions at public 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 291 

meetings. What piles of forgotten and worthless 
resolutions some people have moved !j It is most 
sad, most melancholy. I hear of such men that 
they are better on the platform than in the pulpit. 
Could a deadlier accusation be brought against 
them ! Poor old Exeter Hall ! what a cemetery of 
resolutions ! What an Aceldama of rhetoricians ! 
How falsehood has revelled and sweltered in that 
chilling morgue — the falsehood of exaggerated 
emotion, the pretence of patriotism, the simulation 
of extemporaneouness, the counterfest of Catho- 
licity! Talk of shipwrecks, explosions, collisions, 
eruptions, and conflagrations, go to Exeter Hall ! 

If I owe nothing to laziness, I owe less than noth- 
ing to patronage. This I have already pointed out, 
and I point it out again for the encouragement of 
men who are cursed with any degree of individu- 
ality. To all such men I would say. If you want to 
escape hardship, poison yourselves at once. Never 
forget, however, that God reigns, and that His 
election will stand sure. Be at peace with God, 
and He will handle your enemies. He will raise up 
strong men to comfort you, and He will find for you 
pools of water and combs of honey in unexpected 
places. In my own struggling and battered life I 
see the very face of God, and I gladly live to help 
the children of those who spake kin41y to me in 
the valley and in the night. 



NOTE XLVII. 

Hartford, Conn., is a lovely city in point of en- 
vironment, and lovelier still in point of association. 
It is the city of Bushnell, the theologian ; Mark 
Twain, the humourist ; and Harriet Beecher Stowe, 
the author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin," not to men- 
tion others of more than local fame. As our time 
in the city was short, we had to make the most of 
it ; so, very soon after locating ourselves at the 
hotel, we drove off to see the famous sister of our 
revered Henry Ward Beecher. We were enchanted 
with the route, so many, so handsome, and so hos- 
pitable-looking were the villas and mansions, whose 
open gardens gave the whole scene so park-like an 
aspect. Halt ! this is the place we want — no, not 
this very fine house — the humbler-looking dwelling 
next door ; mark, not humble-looking, but humbler- 
looking, because this one is so very rich and stylish. 

It was interesting to have the door of such a 
house opened by none other than a genuine ne- 
gress. This was in keeping with the fitness of 
things. The happy-looking servant might have 
been expecting us for the last six months, so broad 
and vivid was the smile with which she greeted us. 

*^ Mrs. Stowe at home?" my wife inquired. 

" I think not, ma*am ; I will look, if you will 
wait." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 293 

On returning to the door (she did not ask us in), 
she said : 

" Can't be found, ma*am. The old lady wanders 
about by herself miles and miles, and nobody knows 
where she is ; *spects she's in the woods somewheres.** 

It would have been difficult for an English ser- 
vant to call her mistress ^^ the old lady *' without 
being rude ; but there was no hint of rudeness in the 
gentle tone of the negress. It seemed as if she 
were giving Mrs. Stowe quite a high title, and pay- 
ing due respect to the family escutcheon. 

'' We'll call again in the morning," we said ; and 
were instantly assured that we should have a hearty 
welcome, and that '^ the old lady " should wait for 
us. 

That negress was a gentle despot. 

Mornmg came, and off we were driven by the 
kindest of friends (who had made our acquaintance 
at the City Temple) to try our luck once more. 
The door was opened quite widely — a significant 
act — and the smiling negress simply said ''AH 
right," as if in long-established confidence. We 
seemed to have known that negress a long time. 

'' The room on the right," she said, leaving us to 
ourselves for a few moments. 

'' What a lovely home ! " was our suppressed ex- 
clamation. 

Room opened into room, every window looking 
upon trees and flowers and far-off undulations. It 
was like a bird's-nest, amidst all those lacing twigs 
and branches, and the countless shadows flung by 
the light of that cloudless autumn morning. Every 



294 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

table was loaded with books ; the walls were rich 
with pictures, etchings, and engravings, and every 
little corner had its own fragrant nosegay. With- 
out the faintest sense of grandeur, there was everj^- 
where an assurance of elegance and comfort. It 
was the home of a poet. It seemed as if anybody 
could write a novel who lived in that mossy sum- 
mer-house, and if a novel at all, how beautiful a 
novel it must have been ! Without opening of 
doors, or sound of approach, there she stood. She 
might have oozed in, or been dropped out ot the 
warm breeze, or wafted from the nearest clump of 
flowers, for without sound, or noise, or rush, there 
she was — there, shaking hands with us. was Harriet 
Beecher Stowe. 

"How very small she is!" was my mental ex- 
clamation. Why. she vras only one of the flowers! 
Small, but not dwarfish ; she was complete ; yes, 
there was little of her, but it was all that Nature 
meant her to be. It seemed a3 if Nature wanted 
some one just that size, and made her just so. 
Nature pleased herself in tha': comely miniature. 
But the voice I how nch, how soft, how full ! There 
was nothing of loudness or domineering, yet we felt 
we must listen to it for the sake of its comforting 
music. Mr. Gladstone's conversational voice is of 
the same qualit}^ and therefore it produces the 
same effects. Her talk was no taller than herself, 
and it was about herself, though without egotism. 
She was sorr\- she was out yesterday when we called. 
She spent most of her time out of doors. She 
walked about by herself a good deal, yet never felt 
lonelv. Was she writinsf anvthincf now? 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 295 

*' No '' (smiling), " not for the public ; only letters 
to her friends/' 

Then, without explanation, she would walk out 
of the room and come back again under the fold of 
some curtain we had not noticed. When we rose 
to go she kissed my wife, and added, with a look in 
my direction : 

*' I don't kiss gentlemen/' 

That was my opportunity. 

'' No," said I, *' that may be true ; but that need 
not hinder you from giving me your autograph." 

In a moment she went out of the room, and 
stayed out full five minutes. During these minutes 
we could not but again notice the tranquillity of the 
whole scene. Not an external sound was heard. 
The rich light was broken by the trees and shrubs. 
The soft tick of an unseen clock was as the pre- 
sence of a sleeping child. What the dear old lady 
brought back and gave me with her gentle hand 
was in sweet harmony with the Sabbatic calm ; 

'' He that loveth not, knoweth not God ; for God 
is love. 

" Harriet Beecher Stowe.'' 

This brought with it a light above the brightness 
of the sun, and in that high light we parted from 
the woman whose fame had filled the world. 

Yes, parted from her, but only to hear something 
more about her. Our second call was upon her 
next-door neighbour, none other than Mark Twain. 



296 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

Of all the houses I have ever seen, Mark Twain*s 
is the most charming — not the grandest, not the 
most dollarish, not the most showy, but the exact 
contrary. Elegance and simplicity culminated in 
Mark Twain's house. The difficulty is that, having 
got into it, you don't want to come out of it again. 
Here, also, you have room opening out of room in 
apparently endless succession. Yonder a touch of 
colour, yonder a corner of a conservatory, yonder 
the outline of a library, the walls alive with art, the 
whole bathed in September sunlight. And here is 
Mark himself, and here is Mrs. Mark, both as genial 
as the morning, both most hospitable and welcom- 
ing. 

The conversation was long and varied. If I 
added that it was lit up with stories of all sorts, I 
should be strictly within the line of fact. Mrs. 
Stowe is permitted to use Mark Twain's garden as 
if it were her own. She goes in and out when she 
pleases, and cuts what flowers she likes. So we 
had heard. 

'' Is that a fact, Mr. Clemens?" 

'^Well," said Mark drawlingly and smilingly, *^ it 
is. The only man who objects to it is John." 

'' John ? " said I. 

'' Yes. Well, now, I tell you," he continued ; 
*' John is a heaven-born undertaker in his manner. 
Not a retail undertaker, who smiles and fawns on 
you in the hope that one day he may have the 
burying of you ; but a regular state-endowed un- 
dertaker whose position is assured, and who can 
therefore afford to snub you. John don't like it." 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 297 

" Why not ? '' we asked. 

" Wa — al, because John has his pet flowers that he 
wants to keep, and the old lady snips them off as if 
they had not cost John a ^thought. But one day 
John got the better of her. The old lady was in 
the conservatory, and thinking perhaps to propitiate 
John, she quietly asked, ^ Have you ever read 
*' Uncle Tom's Cabin " ? ' And John turned upon 
her in his best undertaker manner, and looked 
down from a great height, and then said, * Tried to,'^ 
and left her. Now," said Mark, after we had 
laughed, " it will never be known in this world 
whether John knew exactly what he was saying, 
and was thus intentionally rude, or whether he was 
unconscious of having given the most withering 
criticism ever addressed to an author." 

This is my recollection of a sunny morning. I 
thought I would set it down here in the hope that 
somebody would like to share it with me. 



NOTE XLVIIl. 

I SUPPOSE I am mortal. In the course of my 
walks I see not a few just like myself lying dead 
and unburied, so I feel that my fate will be just 
like theirs some day. I live in a large place — a 
place so vast that I cannot tell its size. It is too 
much for me. To think of it makes my poor head 
spin round and round until I feel as if I must fall, 
and if I do fall I am sure I shall rise no more. I 
hope I may not fall. 

What I see in my place and from my place no 
words can tell. No foot of man has come near my 
home. All round about it there are caves and 
shadows and awful pits. In the midst of my place 
there is a mystery which might well drive me mad. 
It is full of light and heat. It glows and flames and 
shines like the sun at noon. It would blind me 
if I went too near. I shake with fright when that 
glare fills the whole space with fire. I think it must 
be so many miles away that no one could so much 
as dream. 

From the space below I often hear a noise of 
steel clashing against steel as if secret murder were 
being done. It is awful to think of. I look, but 
dare not stir. Then high words are heard, and bells 
ring, and a loud laugh as of unholy joy fills all the 
boundless space. Presently the great fires are put 
out as in a moment, and a horrible darkness settles 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 399 

on the scene of strife. I dare not move. I live on 
the edge of a pit. By-and-by, after long waiting, 
there comes a creak, a crash, a flame, and I peep 
forth to behold a red wrath, a gloomy smoke, and a 
movement as of living things in great haste. 

Oh, the vastness of the space ! Oh, the loneli- 
ness of the spot I fill ! Sometimes great eyes are 
turned towards me, as if my presence were hateful. 
They must be angels. The figures are so vast. The 
figures are so grand. The figures look to be so 
strong. I am filled with wonder. I am the only 
intelligent thing that lives. There is other life in 
great abundance, but it is not of my quality ; I 
only can truly think, observe, calculate, and fore- 
cast. In a sense I am the whole. Other things, 
other lives, are part of me. I wish they could see 
things as I do. For their sakes I wish they lived 
up here. I pity their poor lot, yet I cannot raise 
them to my level. 

The speaker in this parable is a common Fly 
walking on the ceiling of my dining-room. Do not 
laugh at the poor Fly. It is thus men talk from 
their little perches of knowledge. The fly thinks 
the ceiling infinite. The fly is dazzled by the gasa- 
lier in the middle of the ceiling. The fly quakes 
when he hears the murderous sound of knives and 
forks in the feast of hospitality. How much wiser 
are we? What do we know of the Infinite? Bet- 
ter say with Paul, '' We know in part." That is 
enough just now. Do not let us trespass upon the 
secrecy of God. Let us pray and serve, and love 
and watt. 



FINAL NOTE. 

As I look back, I throw my musing into this 
weird shape of words : 

I began the w^orld as you, as all, in wonder. 

It was a great world — measureless, thund'rous — 

In which I wakened from immemorial sleep. 

My memories are blurred like an incongruous dream. 

Yet I hear and see a thousand things — nameless, 

tender — 
Which happened in my dawn. 

^* Baby " they called me — always Baby, Baby, 

Baby; 
And when they called me Baby they smiled and 

cooed. 
And dived at me with various assault. 
In tones full of meaning, but void of sense, they 
Cooed and babbled all the day, while I answered 
In vacant looks, and clutched with aimless deter- 
mination. 
They did not make me like themselves ; I made 

them, like me. 
All babies, the whole house a nursery, the old man 

a little child. 
Every woman knew me ; every ten-year-old wanted 

to nurse me. • 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 301 

For father, mother, there was no outer world, no 

change of weather. 
No tempting bargains, no up and down of foreign 

stocks ; 
For sun, moon, and stars, for all the annual seasons, 
For gold and gems — they looked in baby^s crib and 

found them all. 
When I first said '* Mamma ! '' ten letters told ten 

distant friends 
The astounding miracle. 
When my first tooth came, everybody must needs 

know it, 
Feel it, attest it, and telL how twenty other well- 
known babies 
Had grown that very same tooth in that very same 

place. 
Ere he had quite crossed the threshold, the doctor 

was told 
That baby had cut a tooth, whereon he prophesied 
That other teeth might be reasonably expected. 
The doctor, honest as an oak, was yet a wily 

man ; 
He told my mother— willing listener — that on the 

whole 
I was the fairest baby he had ever handled — so 

plump, 
So shapely, and for my minutes the tallest baby he 

had ever seen. 
To full twenty mothers near by he had lied identi- 
cally — 
Innocently lied — for the kind doctor was forgetful 

of details. 



302 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

What the doctor said the mother said, and asked to 

show 
My " tootsy-peg/' and said *' Toofy, toofy — baby 

dot a toofy." 
And when I smiled, she said, " Toofy, toofy, bless 

him den ! 
Did baby get a icHe toofy ? " 
My father pooh-poohed such stuff, called the doctor 

names, 
And told my mother she would put an end to me 

by suffocation. 
Yet, no one near and the door well closed, 
I heard that grim judge say, ''Toofy, toofy, den! 

Did my 
Baby have a ickle toofy ? " When the door softly 

opened, 
He told my mother that baby had been coughing. 



Ah me ! my heart loses half its heat 

As the dreams and spectres seize me 

With spiritual violence. Could'the dear souls 

Have known all that was coming on them. 

How would they have treated baby? 

Would love by accident have found a grave for me? 

Would they have asked God to take me back again? 

Or would they have dared the ominous revelation, 

Seeing with love's eyes Christ's rainbow 

Beyond the storm ? 

Well, what of it all? Is life worth living? A 
good deal depends upon whether you have, in the 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 303 

largest and best meaning of the term, any sense of 
humour. Life without humour is a most gloomy 
and dispiriting experiment. The worst of it is that 
so few people know the meaning of humour; they 
think it is joking, or buffoonery, or forced laughter, 
whereas it is pathos, sympathy, and faculty of opti- 
mistic interpretation. But very few people know 
the real meaning even of prayer ; they think it is 
religious begging, a daily quest of alms, another 
venture in self-aggrandisement, whereas it is wor-, 
ship, communion, aspiration, poetry, a plunging of 
the soul in the ocean of infinite love. You may 
ask nothing and yet get all things. 

Now that I look back upon the *' great and terrible 
wilderness *' of earthly life, it would be an intoler- 
able pain to live but for one's vivid perception of the 
spiritual ministry by which all things are ruled and 
shaped. I believe in God. As to Providence — a 
sweet, housewifely, and most comfortable word — I 
have no more doubt than I have of the sun or the 
earth which he generously warms. As to Provi- 
dence, my own life is the daily proof. Of course 
Providence takes no heed of my personal conceits 
and desires and narrow preferences. Providence 
returns my prayers, contradicts my will, mocks my 
ambitions, and digs graves in my garden. I know 
it, yet my heart praises the living God, and knows 
Him to be near at hand. I thought I could have 
managed some things better than they are managed, 
but I have lived to see what a fool I was when I 
thought so. I can now thank God for events which 
once broke my heart. We are apt to look at events 



304 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 



singly and separately, and to say, in peevish un- 
belief, '' Can there be a God in heaven ? " By-and- 
by we come to put events together, to mass them 
and shape them and set them in proper relation 
and perspective, and then they assume their in- 
tended meaning, and we see it, and gratefully sing 
a song unto the Lord. Even Moses, sternest of 
rulers, the embodied conscience of his villainous 
followers, once sang — perhaps only once — such a 
man could not sing often — and that song was over 
the drowned chariots and horses of Egypt. So it 
has been even in my own little way. God has 
handled my enemies for me. They meant to kill 
me, to starve me, to cover me with odium ; but 
God undertook my cause, and by His goodness I 
have this day bread enough and to spare. We 
should never forget how much we owe to our 
enemies. In one aspect they may be our best 
friends ; undoubtedly that is so in my own case. 
My books, some forty in number, had never been 
written had I been a more clubable man ; so if they 
have done any good, let the unwilling and unsus- 
pected service of the enemy be duly recognised. I 
thank God for solitude. We meet angels on the 
lonely road. Now that it is not in the power of 
any man to help me, now that I have more than I 
want, I lovingly remember all who helped me in the 
struggle, and lent me a light in the darkness, and as 
for those who waited for my halting, I forget their 
names and their designs. 



Do not undervalue the educative influence of 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN, 305 

your hardships ; God meant them for your good. I 
may perhaps go farther, and say that God sent them 
to you, and directed the whole method of the 
attack. I believe that there is a very real and in- 
telligible sense in which the devil is a servant of 
God. I am quite certain, too, that a man's oppo- 
nents are not necessarily bad men even in doing bad 
deeds. We must discriminate. " On some have 
compassion, making a difference." They may 
think they are right. " They know not what they 
do." I have known an instance in which a bitter 
enemy said to a brother minister, '' We have done 
you great injustice." It was a noble sentiment, 
nobly uttered, and reconciliation instantly took 
place. Never be ashamed to tell a man that you 
have wronged him ; rather be ashamed if you do 
not tell him. And if you have been wronged, go 
and tell your brother his fault between you and 
him alone. Who knows but he may hear you, and 
repent his deed? I have often thought that the 
hardships I have had to endure were so many pun- 
ishments for my sins. An insult may be a judg- 
ment ; a neglect may be the shadow of some un- 
holy thought. Why did they withhold such and 
such an honour from me ? Perhaps because I have 
failed in duty, or grieved the Holy Spirit. When 
I talk so to myself, I feel that repentance is the 
forerunner of restoration. 

We should have no time to offend and grieve 
one another ; we should be too busy doing good to 
have any time to annoy. It may be difficult to 



3o6 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

avoid giving offence to some people, on account of 
their morbid sensitiveness, yet who can tell how 
that sensitiveness may have been brought about ? 
Who knows all the subtleties of disease? Our 
very health may be the veil of diseases that do not 
affect the flesh. What room, then, for gentle 
charity and for patient hope ! *' The servant of the 
lord must not strive/* We need not, indeed, in- 
sist on having our very rights ; we may concede 
without loss ; we may surrender and win. 

Looking over all the scenes that have passed 
before me in these notes, I see how some persons 
may be baffled by what to them is frivolity. There 
is nothing frivolous to me in any of them. Oscil- 
lation is part of the mystery of life. It may be a 
defect to have so keen an appreciation of comedy, 
yet in it there is an element of youthfulness — an 
element, indeed, which guarantees a permanent 
overflow of spirits. Even in bishops I have seen 
phases of comedy, and not the less so in the very 
moments when they were most fussily guarding 
their lawn from social criticism. When a bishop is 
very big — I mean dropsically and timidly big — he 
is the most comical of living things. When he is 
simple, gentle, sympathetic, with healing in the 
very hem of his lawn, he moves me to reverence 
and trust and love. All the comical things I have 
related have passed before me in some form or other. 
I have seen them ; they have laughed in my hear- 
ing ; they have played shadow-games on the walls 
of my chamber. In this sense, when I have been 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 307 

most alone I have been least alone. These shadow- 
folks have taken from me many a pain, and spread 
for me many a festival, and spoken to me of the 
morrow that is to be so bright and so long. 
Laughter is one of heaven's own children. 

I make no apology for having so freely used the 
potential mood. I wanted some things to be, and 
therefore I have spoken of them as if they actually 
were. They would have helped me so much, and 
they would have made me so glad ; they would 
have been fountains in dry places, and flowers 
growing in the desert, and infinitely beyond me and 
any other individual man, they would have given 
the kind of comfort which is born of renewed cour- 
age. If men can prophesy in the indicative mood, 
why may they not review in the potential mood ? 
It is no idle exercise, for it may suggest what may 
yet be done by showing what might have been in 
the yesterdays not yet forgotten. What may yet 
be done ! There's a field ! We must be led by 
prophets, not by speculators, by men who inwardly 
see, and not by men who take their luck from 
a box of dice. If we believe the Bible, we can 
have no difficulty in accepting the ministry of 
prophecy. To certain minds God has entrusted 
His '* secret'' in all ages, and that ** secret" has 
been the known, yet unknown, quantity in all civ- 
ilisation and progress. Even prophets may not be 
able to explain their own words, and others may 
regard those words as babble, or as the fumes of 
new wine. When was a true apostle of the king- 



308 MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 

dom ever really understood ? When was true in- 
spiration ever bound in the fetters of literature? 
We may have had literature enough ; what if we 
now pray vehemently for the ministry that lies far 
beyond pen and ink ? We have treated education ; 
we have treated the earth we live on ; we have 
fixed a North Pole we cannot get at, and a South 
Pole we could not live at ; and, having drawn a 
body-line round the globe, we have come to sup- 
pose that the equator had a Divine origin. We 
have tenemented the globe into countries, each with 
its own little patriotisms, and into parishes, each 
with its own local prejudice. We have lost the in- 
teger, and cannot get the fractions to shape them- 
selves into the lost whole number. What we want 
is the living God, with the all-day breeze of His 
quickening Spirit. 

The great blue sky of summer makes God passu 
ble ; the wonders that sky works yearly on the 
earth makes God actual. If a rose-leaf can come 
out of the cold, black earth, there need be no diffi- 
culty about the Resurrection. The star-lit sky of 
wintry nights always speaks to me of Destiny. 
There is room enough for us all up there — thousands 
upon thousands of star-galleries ; think of them as 
temples for the true and holy — homes where there 
shall be no more sighing or crying, neither shall 
there be any more pain, for the former things have 
passed away. Here and now it is nothing but fare- 
well ; the last lingering look ; the grip that kills the 
very heart it meant to bless ; the love-token that 
seals the unbroken covenant of sacred devotion — 



MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 309 

that is the heart-breaking now. But close at hand 
is the other world and better, where the flowers 
fade not, and the service is of song and festival. 
We need that other world if we would escape de- 
spair in the world that now is. I will not think of 
my dear ones as dead ; they cannot be dead who fell 
asleep in Christ. They told me that Christ was 
with them ; they said they saw His dear face ; they 
pledged me in His dear Name to meet them in 
heaven*s morning, and in the sweet bitterness of 
my sorrow, I took oath to that effect. Then how 
poor the earth became, and how Time shrank into 
a moment I We are the richer for witnessing such 
dying — the tenderer, the wholesomer, in all the 
springs and outlets of life. Who can come away 
from his child's grave to renew a feud or gratify a 
passion? He comes, rather, with a cleansed and 
forgiving heart— yea, he longs and yearns to for- 
give, that he may be nearer his ascended child. 



Farewell. 

Pity me wherein I have done amiss. 
If I have been hard upon any good man, God 
forgive me ! 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: April 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranbeny Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



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